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Epochs of Modern History 



THE 



EARLY PLANTAGENETS 



BY 

WILLIAM STUBBS, M.A. 
» > 

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 



WITH TWO MAPS 



BOSTON t^^" 

ESTES AND LAURIAT 

CHICAGO 

JANSEN, McCLURG, & CO. 

SAN FRANCISCO 

PAYOT, UPiiAM, & CO. 

1876 



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CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Importance of the Epoch — Its character in French and German 
History — In English History — Geographical Summary — Italy 
— Germany — France — Spain Page i 



CHAPTER II. 

STEPHEN AND MATILDA. 

Accession of Stephen — Arrest of the Bishops — Election of Matilda 
— The Anarchy — The Pacification lo 



CHAPTER III. 

THE EARLY YEARS OF HENRY II. 

Terms of Henry's accession — His character — His early reforms — 
His relations with France — War of Toulouse — Summary of nine 
years' work • S-; 



vi Contents. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HENRY II. AND THOMAS BECKET. 

The English Church — Schools of clergy — Rise of Becket — Quarrel 
with the King — Exile — Death Page 55 

CHAPTER V. 

THE LATTER YEARS OF HENRY IT. 

Continued reforms — Revolt of 1173-1174 — Renewed industry of 
Henry — His later years — Quarrel with Richard — Fall and 
death 80 

CHAPTER VI. . 

RICHARD CCEUR DE LION. 

Character of the reign — Richard's first visit to England — His cha- 
racter — The Crusade — Fall of Longchamp — Richard's second 
visit — His struggle with Philip — His death .... 104 

CHAPTER VII. 

JOHN. 

John's succession— Arthur's claims— Loss of Normandy— Quarre 
with the Church— Su.bmission to the Pope— Quarrel with the 
Barons— The Great Charter and its consequences— Arrival of 
Lewis — John's death 129 

CHAPTER VIII. 

HENRY III. 

Character of Henry— Administration of William Marshall— Hubert 
de Burgh — Henry his own minister — Foreign favourites — 
General misgovernment — Papal intrigue and taxation . 153 



Contents. vii 



CHAPTER IX. 

SIMON DE MONTFORT. 

Delay of the crisis — Simon de Montfort — Parliament of 1258 — 
Provisions of Oxford — Political troubles — Award of St. Lewis — 
Battle of Lewes — Baronial government — Battle of Evesham — 
Closing years , Page. 179 



CHAPTER X. 

EDWARD I. 

Position and character of Edward — The Crusade — The accession — 
The conquest of Wales — Edward's legal reforms — Financial 
system — Growth of Parliament 202 



CHAPTER XL 

THE CONFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS. 

Punishment of the Judges — Banishment of the Jews — Scottish suc- 
cession — The French quarrel — The Ecclesiastical quarrel — The 
Constitutional crisis — The Confirmation of the Charters — Par- 
liament of Lincoln — Its sequel — War of Scottish Independence 
— Edward's death 227 



CHAPTER XII. 

EDWARD II. 

Character of Edward II. — Piers Gaveston — The Ordinances — 
Thomas of Lancaster — The Despensers — The King's ruin and 
death ... 251 

Index 277 



MAPS. 

Medieval Europe To face Title 

England and France (i 152-1327) . . ,, ^. 32 



THE 

EARLY PLANTAGENETS. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Importance of the Epoch — Its character in French and German 
History — In Enghsh History — Geographical Summary — Italy— ' 
Germany — France — Spain. 

The geographical area of that history which alone de- 
serves the name has more than once changed. The early 
home of human society was in Asia. Greece various 
and Italy successively became the theatres areas and 
of the world's drama, and in modern times human 
the real progress of society has moved within history. 
the limits of Western Christendom. So, too, with the 
material history. At one period the growth of the life 
of the world is in its literature, at another in its wars, 
at another in its institutions. Sometimes everything 
circles round one great man ; at other times the key 
to the interest is found in some complex political idea, 
such as the balance of power, or the realisation of na- 
tional identity. The successive stages of growth in the 

M. H. B 



2 The Early Plmitagenets, ch. i. 

more advanced nations are not contemporaneous and 
may not follow in the same order. The quickened energy 
of one race finds its expression in commerce and coloni- 
sation, that of another in internal organisation and elabo- 
rate training, that of a third in arms, that of a fourth in 
art and literature. In some the literary growth precedes 
the political growth, in others it follows it ; in some it is 
forced into premature luxuriance by national struggles, in 
others the national struggles themselves engross the 
strength that would ordinarily find expression in litera- 
ture. Art has flourished greatly both where pohtical 
freedom has encouraged the exercise of every natural 
gift and where political oppression has forced the genius 
of the people into a channel which seemed least dangerous 
to the oppressor. Still, on the whole, the European na- 
tions in modern history emerge from somewhat similar 
circumstances. Under somewhat similar discipline, and 
by somewhat similar expedients they feel their way to 
that national consciousness in which they ultimately di- 
verge so widely. We may hope, then, to find, in the illus- 
tration of a definite section or well ascertained epoch 
of that history, sufficient unity of plot and interest, a 
sufficient number of contrasts and analogies, to save it 
from being a dry analysis of facts or a mere statement 
of general laws. 

Such a period is that upon which we now enter ; an 
epoch which in the history of England extends from 
The epoch ^^^ accession of Stephen to the death of 
to be now Edward II.; that is, from the beginning of 

the constitutional growth of a consolidated 
English people to the opening of the long struggle 
with France under Edward III. It is scarcely less 

well defined in French and German history. 
France. j^ France it witnesses the process through 

which the modern kingdom of France was constituted ; 




CH. I. 



Introduction. 



the aggregation of the several provinces which had 
hitherto recognised only a nominal feudal supremacy, 
under the direct personal rule of the k'ng, and their in- 
corporation into a national system of administration. 
In Germany it comprises a more varied series 
of great incidents. The process of disruption 
in the German kingdom, never well consolidated, had 
begun with the great schism between North and South 
under Henry IV., and furnished one chief element in the 
quarrel between pope and emperor. During the first 
half of the twelfth century it worked more deeply, if not 
more widely, in the rivalry between Saxon and Swabian. 
Under Frederick I. it necessitated the remodelhng of the 
internal arrangements of Germany, the breaking up of 
the national or dynastic dukedoms. Under Frederick 
II. it broke up the empire itself, to be reconstituted in a 
widely different form and with altered aims and preten- 
sions under Rudolf of Hapsburg. This is by itself a most 
eventful history, in which the varieties of combinations 
and alternations of public feeling abound with new results 
and illustrations of the permanence of ancient causes. 

In the relations of the Empire and the Papacy the 
same epoch contains one cycle of the great rivalry, the 
series of struggles which take a new form 
under Frederick I. and Alexander III., and 
come to an end in the contest between Lewis of Bavaria 
and John XXII. It comprises the whole dram.a of the 
Hohenstaufen, and the failure of the great hopes of the 
world under Henry VII., which resulted in the constitu- 
ting of a new theory of relations under the Luxemburg 
and Hapsburg emperors. 

Whilst these greater actors are thus preparing for the 
struggle which forms the later history of European poli- 
tics, Spain and Italy are passing through a different 
discipline. In the midst of all runs the history of the 



The Early Plantagenets. 



CH. I. 



Church and the Crusades, which supplies one continuous 
clue to the reading of the period, a common ground on 
which all the actors for a time and from time to time 
meet. 

But the interest of the time is not confined to political 
history. It abounds with character. It is an age in 
An epoch of which there are very many great men, and 
great men. jn which the great men not only occupy but 
deserve the first place in the historian's eye. It is their 
history rather than the history of their peoples that fur- 
nishes the contribution of the period to the world's 
progress. This is the heroic period of the middle ages, — 
the only period during which, on a great scale and on a 
great stage, were exemplified the true virtues which were 
later idealised and debased in the name of chivalry, — the 
age of John of Brienne and Simon de Montfort, of the two 
great Fredericks, of St. Bernard and Innocent III., and 
of St. Lewis and Edward I. It is free for the most part 
from the repulsive features of the ages that precede, and 
from the vindictive cruelty and political immorality of the 
age that follows. Manners are more refined than in the 
Manners earlier age and yet simpler and sincerer than 
and reli- thosc of the next; religion is more distinctly 
operative for good and less marked by the 
evils which seem inseparable from its participation in 
the political action of the world. Yet not even the thir- 
teenth century was an age of gold, much less those por- 
tions of the twelfth and fourteenth which come within our 
present view. It was not an age of prosperity, although 
it was an age of growth ; its gains were gained in great 
measure by sufiering. If Lewis IX. and Edward I. 
j^Q,.aj taught the world that kings might be both 

lesions. good men and strong sovereigns, Henry III. 

and Lewis VII. taught it that religions habits and even 
firm convictions are too often insufficient to keep the 



CH. I. 



Introduction. 



weak from falsehood and wrong. The history of Frede- 
rick II. showed that the race is not always to the swift 
or the battle to the strong, that of Conrad and Conradin 
that the right is not always to triumph, and that the 
vengeance which evil deeds must bring in the end comes 
in some cases very slowly and with no remedy to those 
who have suffered. 

It is but a small section of this great period that we 
propose to sketch in the present volume; — the history of 
our own country during this epoch of great j^^ 
men and great causes ; but it comprises the of Eng- 
history of what is one at least of England's in this 
greatest contributions to the world's progress, ^po^h. 
The history of England under the early kings of the 
house of Plantagenet unfolds and traces the growth of 
that constitution which, far more than any other that the 
world has ever seen, has kept alive the forms and spirit 
of free government; which has been the discipline that 
formed the great free republic of the present day; which 
was for ages the beacon of true social freedom that terri- 
fied the despots abroad and served as a model for the 
aspirations of hopeful patriots./ It is scarcely too much 
to say that English history, during these ages, is the 
history of the birth of true political liberty, if For, not to 
forget the services of the Italian republics, or of the 
German confederations of the middle ages, we cannot 
fail to see that in their actual results they fell as dead 
before the great monarchies of the sixteenth century, as 
the ancient liberties of Athens had fallen ; or where the 
spirit survived, as in Switzerland, it took a form in which 
no great nationality could work. It was in England 
alone that the problem of national self-government was 
practically solved ; and although under the Tudor and 
Stewart sovereigns Englishmen themselves ran the risk 
of forgetting the lesson they had learned and being 



The Early Planiagenets. 



CH. li 



robbed of the fruits for which their fathers had laboured, 
the men who restored political consciousness, and who 
recovered the endangered rights, won their victory by 
argumentative weapons drawn from the storehouse of 
medieval English history, and by the maintenance and 
realisation of the spirit of liberty in forms which had 
survived from earlier days, ult is as an intrc^uction to 
Character ^^^^ study of English history during the period 
of this book, of Constitutional growth, that we shall attempt 
to sketch the epoch, not as a Constitutional History, but 
as an outline of the period and of the combinations 
through which the constitutional growth was working, 
the place of England in European history and the cha- 
racter of the men who helped to make her what she 
ultimately became. Before we begin, however, we may 
take a glance at the rnap of Europe at the point of time 
from which we start. I 

Eastern Europe, irom the coasts of the Adriatic to 
the limits of Mahometan conquest eastward, was sub- 
Geographi- J^^^ ^° ^^^ emperor who reigned at Constanti- 
cal sum- nople, and may, except for its incidental 
^'^' connexion with the Crusades, be left out of 

the present view. The northern portions were in the. 
hands of half-civilised, half-Christianised races, which 
formed a barrier dangerous but efficacious between the 
Byzantine emperor and Western Christendom. The 
Eastern kingdom of Hungary, and the acquisitions of 

Europe. Venice on the east of the Adriatic fenced 

medieval Europe from the same enemies. Italy was 
divided between the Normans, who governed Apulia 
and Sicily, and the sway of the Empire, which under 
Lothar \\. — the Emperor who was on the throne when 
our period begins — had become little more than nominal 
south of the Alps ; the independence of the imperial 
cities and small principalities reaching from the Alps to 



CH. I. 



Introductio7t. 



Rome itself was maintained chiefly by the inabiHty ot 
the Germans to keep either by administrative organisa- 
tion or by dynastic alhances a permanent hold 
upon it. With both the Republican north ' • 

and the Normanised south, the political history of the 
Plantagenet kings came in constant connexion; and even 
more close and continuous was the relation through the 
agency of the Church with Rome itself. At the opening 
of the period, Englishmen were not only studying in the 
universities of Italy, at Salerno, at Bologna, and at Pavia, 
but were repaying to Italy, in the services of prelates and 
statesmen, the debt which England had incurred through 
Lanfranc and Anselm. An Englishman was soon to be 
pope. The Norman kings chose ministers and prelates 
of English birth; and the same Norman power of or- 
ganisation which worked in England under Henry I. and 
Roger of Salisbury, worked in similar lines in Sicily 
under King Roger and his posterity. 

Looking northwards, we see Germany, in the middle 
of the twelfth century, still administered, although un- 
easily, under the ancient system of the four 
nations, Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, and Ba- 
varia; four distinct nationalities which refused permanent 
combination. This system was, however, in its last decay. 
Its completeness was everywhere broken in upon by the 
great ecclesiastical principalities which the piety and 
policy of the emperors had interposed among the great 
secular states, to break the impulse of aggressive warfare, 
to serve as models of good order, and to maintain a direct 
hold in the imperial hands on territories which could not 
become hereditary in a succession of priests. Not only 
so ; the debateable lands which lay between the great 
nations were breaking up into minor states: landgraves, 
margraves, and counts palatine were assuming the func- 
tions of dukes ; the dukes, where they could not maintain 



8 The Early Plantagenets. ch. i. 

the independence of kings, were seeing their powers lim- 
ited and their territories divided. Thus Bavaria was soon 
to be dismembered to form a duchy of Austria ; Saxony- 
was falHng to pieces between the archbishops of Cologne 
and the margraves of Brandenburg : Franconia between 
the Emperor and the Count Palatine; Swabia was the 
portion of the reigning imperial house, the treasury there- 
fore out of which the Emperor had to carve rewards for 
his servants. Between the great house of the Welf in 
Saxony, Bavaria, and Lombardy, and the Hohenstaufen 
on the imperial throne and in Franconia and Swabia, 
subsisted the jealousy which was sooner or later to reach 
the heart of the Empire itself, to supply the force which 
threw the dislocated provinces into absolute division. 

Westward was France under Lewis VII., divided 

from Germany by the long narrow range of the Lothar- 

The inter- ingian provinces, over which the imperial rule 

mediate was recognised as nominal only. These pro- 

provinces. yinccs formed a debateable boundary line, 

which had for one of its chief functions the maintenance 

of peace between the descendants of Hugh Capet and 

the representatives of the majesty of Charles and Otto ; 

and which served its turn, for between France and the 

Hohenstaufen empire there was peace and alliance. But 

many of the provinces which now form part of France 

were then imperial, and beyond the Rhone and Meuse 

the king of Paris had no vassals and but uncertain allies. 

Within his feudal territory, the count of Flan- 

ders to the north, the duke of Aquitaine to 

the south, the duke of Normandy with his claims over 

Maine and Brittany, cut him off from the sea ; and even 

the little strip of coast between Flanders and Normandy 

was held by the count of Boulogne, who at the moment 

was likewise king of England. Yet the kingdom of France 

was by no means at its deepest degradation. Lewis VI. 

had kept alive the idea of a central power, and had ob- 



CH. I. 



Introduction. 



tained for his son the hand of the heiress of Aquitaine ; 
the schemes were already in operation by which the kings 
were to offer to the provinces a better and firmer rule 
than they enjoyed under their petty lords, by which fraud 
and policy were to split up the principalities and attract 
them fragment by fragment to the central power, and by 
which even Normandy itself was in little more than fifty 
years to be recovered ; by which a real central govern- 
ment was to be instituted, and the semblance of national 
unity to be completed by the formation of a distinct na- 
tional character. 

North of France the imperial provinces of Lower 
Lorraine, and the debateable lands between Lorraine 
and Saxony, had much the same indefinite r^j^^ l^^ 
character as belonged to the southern parts Countries. 
of the intermediate kingdom. They seldom took part 
in the work of the Empire, although they were nominally 
part of it, and the stronger emperors enforced their right. 
But as a rule they were too distant from the centre of 
government to fear much interference, and, enjoying such 
freedom as they could, they gladly recognised the em- 
peror's sway when they required his help. We shall see 
the princes of Lorraine taking no small part in the ne- 
gotiations between England and Germany under Richard 
and John, but they generally played a game with Flan- 
ders, France, and the Empire which has but an indirect 
bearing on European politics ; and we chiefly hear of 
these lands as furnishing the hordes of mercenary sol- 
diers for the crusades and internal wars of Europe, until 
almost suddenly the Flemish cities break -upon our eye 
as centres of commerce and political life. 

Southward lie Spain and Portugal ; divided into 
several small kingdoms between closely allied g j^^ ^^^ 
and kindred kings, all employed in the long Portugal. 
crusade of seven centuries against the Moor: a crusade 
which is now beginning to have hopes of successful issue. 



lO The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1135. 

Central Spain, on the line of the Tagus, is still in dispute, 
although Toledo had been taken in 1085, and Saragossa 
in 1 1 1 8. Lisbon was taken with the help of the Cru- 
saders in 1 147. In each of the Christian states of Spain, 
free institutions of government, national assemblies and 
local self-government, preserved distinct traces of the 
Teutonic or Gothic origin of the ruling races ; and even 
before the English parliament grew to completeness, 
the Cortes of Castille and Aragon were theoretically- 
complete assemblies of the three estates. The growth 
of Spain is one of the distinct features of our epoch; 
but it is a growth apart. There are as yet scarcely more 
than one or two points at which it comes in contact with 
the general action of Europe. 



CHAPTER II. 

STEPHEN AND MATILDA. 

Accession of Stephen — Arrest of the Bishops — Election of Matilda — 
The Anarchy — The Pacification. 

The English had had hard times under the Conqueror 
and his sons, but they had learned a great lesson : they 
Results of ^^^^ learned that they were one people. The 
the Norman Normans too, the great nobles who had di- 
vided the land and hoped to create little 
monarchies of their own in every county and manor, had 
had hard times. Confiscation, mutilation, exile, death 
had come heavily upon them. They also had had a lesson 
to learn, to rid themselves of personal and selfish aims, 
to consolidate a powerful state under a king of their own 
race, and to content themselves as servants of the law 
with the substantial enjoyment of powers which they 
found themselves too weak to wrest out of the hands of 



A. D. 1 135- Stephen and Matilda. 1 1 

the king, the supreme law-giver and administrator of the 
law. This lesson they had not learned. They had sub- 
mitted with an ill grace to the strong rille of the king's 
ministers, the men whom they had taught to guard 
against their attempts at usurpation. Hence throughout 
these reigns the Norman king and the English people 
had been thrown together. They soon learned that they 
had common aims, finding themselves constantly in array 
against a common enemy. Hence, too, the English 
had already an earnest of the final victory. They grew 
whilst their adversaries wasted. The successive genera- 
tions of the Normans found their wiser sons learning to 
call themselves English, while those who would not learn 
English ways declined in number and strength from year 
to year. 

The Conqueror in a measure, and Henry I. with 
more clearness, perceived this, and foresaw the result. 
They were careful not only to call themselves Alliance 
English kings, but nominally at least to main- of king and 
tain English customs and to rule by English 
laws. One by one the great houses which furnished rivals 
to their power dropped before them, and Henry I. at the 
close of his reign was so strong that, had it not been for 
the fact that he had by habit and routine made himself a 
law to himself, he might easily have played the part of 
a tyrant. But the forces which he and his father had 
so sturdily repressed were not extinguished ; nor was the 
administrative system, by which they at once maintained 
the rights of the English and kept their own grasp of 
power, sufficiently consolidated to stand steadily when 
the hands that had reared it were taken away. 

This also, it may seem probable, Henry I. distinctly 
saw. It was to his apprehensions on this Question of 
account that for years before his death he succession. 
was busily employed in securing the succession by every 



12 The Early Plantag&ncts, a.d. 1135. 

possible means to his own children. The feeling which 
led him to do so is not quite capable of simple analysis. 
He had no great love for his daughter, the empress 
Matilda; what paternal affection he had to lavish had 
been spent on his son Wilham, whose death was no 
doubt the trouble that went nearest to his heart. We 
cannot suppose that he cared much for the people whom, 
although they had delivered him more than once in the 
most trying times, he never scrupled, when it suited his 
purpose, to treat as slaves. It would almost seem as if 
he felt that, unless he could anticipate the continuance of 
power in the hands of his daughter and her offspring, his 
own tenure of it for the present would be incomplete, and 
the great glory of the sons of Rollo would suffer diminu- 
tion in his hands. 

Three times, therefore, by the most solemn oaths, he 
had tried to secure the adherence of the nation to her 

Precautions ^^^ ^° ^^^ ^^'^' ^^^^ assemblies had been 
taken by held, attended by Norman and English alike. 
^"'^^ ' Earl Stephen and earl Robert had vied with 
one another as to who should take the first oath of 
homage; the concurrence of the Church had been pro- 
mised and, so far as gratitude and a sense of interest 
as well as duty could go, had been secured. But all 
this had been insufficient to stay Henry's misgivings. 
At the time of his death he had been already four years 
in Normandy striving to keep peace between Matilda 
and her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, between the Nor- 
mans and the Angevins, and to consolidate his hold on 
the duchy, which had at last, since the death of his 
nephew and brother, become indisputably his own. His 
sudden death occurred in the midst of these designs. It 
was said and sworn to by his steward Hugh Bigot, a 
man whose later career adds little to his authority as a 
witness, that just before his death, provoked by her per- 



A. D. 1 135. Stephen and Matilda. 13 

verseness, he had disinherited his daughter. It may 
have been so ; the threat of. disinheritance may have been 
a menace which his unexpected death gave him no time 
to recall. But the very report was enough. He died on 
December i, 1135; and from that moment the succes- 
sion was treated as an open question, to be discussed by 
Normans and Englishmen, together or apart, as they 
pleased. 

We may if we choose speculate on the motives that 
swayed the great men. No doubt the pure Norman 
nobles would gladly have set aside altogether -^j^^ ^^^^ 
the descendants of Harlotta ; all the Normans the compe- 
together would have refused the rule of Geof- 
frey of Anjou. A new duke, if they must have a duke, 
might be chosen from the house of Champagne, from 
among the sons of Adela, the Conqueror's greatest and 
most famous daughter ; Count Theobald was the reign- 
ing count, but he was not the eldest son, and as his elder 
brother had been set aside so might he. Stephen, the 
next brother, the Count of Mortain and Bou- Stephen of 
logne, and first baron of Normandy, had Blois. 
already his footing in the land. His wife too was ot 
English descent. Her mother was sister to the good 
queen of Henry I., and whatever the old king had hoped 
to gain by this blood connexion with his subjects, Stephen 
might gain by his wife. Stephen was a brave man too, 
and he had as yet made no enemies. 

But his success, such as it was, was due to his own 
promptness. He had, as count of Boulogne, the com- 
mand of the shortest passage to England. Whilst the 
Normans were discussing the merits of his brother 
Theobald, he took on himself to be his own messenger. 
He remembered how his uncle had won the crown and 
treasure of William Rufus ; he left the Norman lords to 
look after the funeral of their dead lord and sailed for 



14 The Early Plaiitageiiets. a.d. 1135. 

Kent ; at Dover and at Canterbury he was received with 
sullen silence. The men of Kent had no love for the 
Stephen's Stranger who came, as his predecessor Eustace 
arrival in had done, to trouble the land; on he went 
to London, and there he learned that the 
same prejudice which existed in Normandy against the 
Angevins was in full force. ' We will not have,' the Lon- 
doners said, ' a stranger to rule over us ; ' though how 
Stephen of Champagne was more a stranger than Geoffrey 
of Anjou it is not easy to see. Anyhow, as nothing suc- 
ceeds like success, nothing is so potent to secure the 
name of king as the wearing of the crown. So Stephen 
went on to Winchester and there secured the crown and 
treasure. In little more than three weeks he had come 
again to London and claimed the crown as the elect of 
the nation. 

The assembly which saw the coronation and did 
homage on St. Stephen's day was but a poor substitute 
Election of for the great councils which had attended the 
Stephen, summons of William and Henry, and in which 

and corona- ■' ' 

tion. Stephen, as a subject, had played a leading 

part. There was his brother Henry of Winchester, the 
skilled and politic churchman, who was willing enough 
to be a king's brother if he might build up ecclesiastical 
supremacy through him ; there was Archbishop William 
of Corbeuil, who had undertaken by the most solemn 
obligations to support Matilda, and who knew that his 
prerogative vote might decide the contest against Ste- 
phen, although it could not restore the chances of peace ; 
there was Roger of Salisbury, the late king's prime 
minister, the master builder of the constitutional fabric, 
undecided between duty and the desire of retaining 
power. Very few of the barons were there ; Hugh Bigot, 
indeed, with his convenient oath, and a few more whose 
complicity with Stephen had already thrown them on 



A.D. 1 135. Stephe7t and Matilda. 15 

him as a sole chance of safety. The rest of the great 
men present were the citizens of London, Norman barons 
of a sort, foreign merchants, some few rich EngHshmen : 
all of them men who were used to public business, who 
knew how Henry L, had held his courts, who believed 
confidently in force and money. They had first encou- 
raged Stephen from fear of Geoffrey ; and more or less 
they held to Stephen as long as he lived. These men 
constituted the witenagemot that chose him king, and 
overruled the scruples of the inconstant archbishop. 
They took upon them to represent the nation that should 
ratify the election of a new king with their applause. 

Henry I. was not yet in his grave; but all promises 
made to him were forgotten. With what seems pj^^^ ^^^^ 
a sort of irony, Stephen issued as his corona- ter of 
tion charter a simple promise to observe and ^^ 
compel the observance of all the good laws and good 
customs of his uncle. 

The news of the great event travelled rapidly. Count 
Theobald, vexed and disappointed as he was, refused to 
contest the crown which his brother already wore ; Geof- 
frey and Matilda were quarrelling with their own subjects 
in Anjou ; and Robert of Gloucester, who hated Stephen 
more than he loved Matilda, saw that he must bide his 
time. Some crisis must soon occur; he knew that 
Stephen would soon spend his treasure and break his 
promises. Meanwhile the old king must be buried like 
a king'; and the great lords came over with the corpse 
to Reading where he had built his last resting-place. 
There Stephen met them, within the twelve days of 
Christmas ; and after the funeral, at Oxford or some- 
where in the neighbourhood, he arranged terms with 
them; terms by which he endeavoured, amplifying the 
words of his charter, to catch the goodwill of each class 
of his subjects. To the clergy he promised rehef from 



1 6 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1136. 

the exactions of the late reign and freedom of election ; to 
the barons he promised a relaxation of the forest law, 
the execution of which had been hardened and sharp- 
ened by Henry I. ; and to the people he promised the 
abolition of danegeld. ^ These things chiefly and other 
things besides he vowed to God/ says Henry of Hunt- 
ingdon, ' but he kept none of them.' The promises were 
perhaps not insincere at the time ; anyhow they had the 
desired effect, and united the nation for the moment. 

The king by this means got time to hasten into the 
North, where King David of Scots, the uncle of the em- 
p. . press, had invaded the country in her name, 

sionbythe The two kings met at Durham. David had 
taken Newcastle and Carlisle; Newcastle he 
surrendered, Carlisle Stephen left in his hands as a bribe 
for neutrality. It was too much for David, who, although 
a good king, was a Scot. He agreed to make peace ; 
but he had sworn fealty to his niece : he could not be- 
come Stephen's man. His son Henry, however, might 
bear the burden ; so Henry swore and Stephen sealed the 
bargain with the gift of Huntingdon, part of the inheri- 
tance of Henry's mother, the daughter of Waltheof, the 
last of the English earls. Then Stephen went back to 
London and so to Oxford. There he published a new 
charter, intended to comprise the new promises of good 
government. 

This was done soon after Easter, and, as the name of 
earl Robert of Gloucester is found among the witnesses, 
Second ^^ ^^ clear that he had submitted ; but the oath 

charter of which he took to Stephen was a conditional 
^^ ^"" one, more like that of a rival potentate than of 
a dependent ; he would be faithful to the king so long as 
the king should preserve to him his rights and dignities. 
This was no slight concession, made by Robert doubtless 
because he saw that his sister's cause was hopeless; but 



A. D. 1 1 36. Stephen and Matilda. ly 

it was no slight obligation for Stephen to undertake 
Robert had great feudal domains in England, and all 
the personal friends of his father and sister were at his 
beck. Stephen might have been safer with him as a de- 
clared enemy. But for the moment there was peace. 

The charter, published at Oxford, promised good 
government very circumstantially ; the abuses of the 
Church, of the forests, and of the sheriffs, were all to be 
remedied. But the enactments made were not nearly so 
clear or circumstantial as the promises made at the late 
king's funeral. 

The first cloud, and it was a very little one, arose 
soon after. Before Whitsuntide Stephen was taken ill, 
and a rumour went forth that he was dead. Rebellion 
The Norman rage for treason began to fer- of 1136. 
ment. Hugh Bigot, the lord of Norwich, was the first to 
take up arms ; Baldwin of Redvers, the greatest lord in 
Devonshire, followed. But the king recovered as quickly 
as he had sickened. He took Norwich and Exeter, but 
— deserting thus the uniform policy of his predecessors — 
spared the traitors. Cheered by this measure of success, 
he immediately broke the second of his constitutional 
promises, holding a great court of inquiry into the forests, 
and impleading and punishing at his pleasure. 

The year 1 1 36 affords little more of interest ; the year 
1 1 37 was spent in securing Normandy, which Geoffrey 
and Matilda were unable to hold against him. Beginning 
and in forming a close alliance with France. ^^ troubkb. 
When he returned, just before Christmas, he had spent 
nearly all his money, and the evil day was not far off. 
Rebellion was again threatening, and a mighty dark cloud 
had for the second time arisen in the North. We are noc 
told by the historians exactly whether the king's misrule 
made the opening for the revolt, or the revolt forced him 
into misrule. Possibly the two evils waxed worse and 

M. H. C 



1 8 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1138. 

worse together : for neither party trusted the other, and 
under the circumstances every precaution wore the look 
Second of aggression. Stephen was to the last degree 

invasion by impolitic ; and to say that is to allow that he 
in 1138. ' was more than half dishonest. Still he had the 
great majority of the people on his side. A premature 
but general rebellion in the early months of 11 38 was 
crushed in detail. Castle after castle was taken ; but 
Robert of Gloucester had now declared himself, and King 
David, seeing Stephen busily employed in the South, in- 
vaded Yorkshire. It was a great struggle, but the York- 
shiremen were equal to the trial. Whether or no they 
loved Stephen they hated the Scots. " The great barons 
who were on the king's side did their part ; the ancient 
standards of the northern churches, of St. Peter of York, 
St. Wilfrid of Ripon, and St. John of Beverley, were 
hoisted, and all men flew to them. The old archbishop 
Thurstan, who had struggled victoriously twenty years 
before against King Henry and the archbishop of Can- 
Battle of terbury to boot, sent his suffragan to preach 
the Stan- the national cause. Not only the knights with 
their men-at-arms, but the husbandmen, with 
their sons and servants, the old Anglo-Saxon militia, the 
parish priests at the head of their parishioners, streamed 
forth over hill and plain, and in the Battle of the Stan- 
dard, as it was called, they beat the Scots at Cowton 
Moor with such completeness that the rebellion came to 
nothing in consequence. 

Stephen felt no small addition of strength from this 
victory, but he was nearer the end of his treasure and the 
Stephen's days of pcacc were over. Without money it 
imprudent is hard to act like a statesman : the difficulties 
^'^ ^^^' were too strong for Stephen's gratitude, and 

good faith. Yet he began his misrule not without some 
method. The power of Robert of Gloucester lay chiefly 



A. D. 1 138. Stephen and Matilda. 19 

in his influence with the great earls who represented the 
famines of the Conquest. Stephen also would have a 
court of great earls, but in trying to make himself friends 
he raised up persistent enemies. He raised His new 
new men to new earldoms, but as he had no ^aris. 
spare domains to bestow, he endowed them with pen- 
sions charged on the Exchequer : thus impairing the 
crown revenue at the moment that his personal authority 
was becoming endangered. To refill the treasury he 
next debased the coinage. To recruit his mill- coinage 
tary power, diminished by the rebellion, and debased. 
by the fact that the weakness of his administration was 
letting the county organisation fall into decay, he called 
in Fleming mercenaries. (Y\\^ very means thati^ Mercenaries 
he took to strengthen his position ruined him. imported. 
The mercenaries alienated the people: the debased coin- 
age destroyed the confidence of the merchants and the 
towns : the new and unsubstantial earldoms provoked the 
real earls to further hostility ; and the newly created lords 
demanded of the king new privileges as the reward and 
security for their continued services. 

Still the clergy were faithful ; and the clergy were 
very powerful : they conducted the mechanism of govern- 
mentjthey filled the national councils ; they Breach with 
were rich too, and earnest in the preservation the clergy. 
of peace. With Henry of Winchester his brother, Roger 
of Salisbury his chief minister, Theobald of Canterbury 
his nominee, he might still flourish. The Church at all 
events was sure to outlive the barons. With almost in- 
credible imprudence Stephen contrived to throw the 
clergy into opposition, and by one fell stroke to break up 
all the administrative machinery of the realm. It may 
be that he was growing suspicious, or jealous : it is more 
probable that he acted under foolish advice. Anyhow he 
did it. 



20 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1139. 

Roger of Salisbury, the great justiciar of Henry I., was 
now an old man. He had contributed more perhaps than 
Roger of ^^7 Other to set Stephen on the throne, and 
Salisbury. had not only first placed in his hands the 
sinews of war, but had maintained the revenue of the 
crown by maintaining the administration of justice and 
finance. He had not served for naught. He had got his 
son made chancellor ; two of his nephews were bishops, 
one of them treasurer of the king as well. He had no 
humble idea of his own position : he had built castles 
the like of which for strength and beauty were not found 
north of the Alps. He had perhaps some intention of 
holding back when the struggle came and of turning the 
scale at the last moment as seemed him best, an inten- 
tion which he shared with the chief of his brethren ; for 
Henry of Winchester, although the king's brother, was 
before all things a churchman ; and Theobald of Can- 
terbury, although he owed his place either to the good 
will or to the connivance of Stephen, was consistently 
and more or less actively a faithful adherent to Matilda 
and her son. 

How much Stephen knew of the designs of the 
bishops we know not, what he suspected we can only 
Arrest of suspect : but the result was unmistakeable. 
the bishops. He tried a surprise that turned to his own 
discomfiture. He arrested bishop Roger and 
his nephew, Alexander bishop of Lincoln, and compelled 
them to resign the castles which he pretended to think 
they were fortifying against him. At once the church 
was in arms : sacrilege and impiety determined even 
Henry of Winchester, who in 1139 became legate of the 
see of Rome, against his brother. 

This would have been hard enough to bear, as many 
far stronger kings than Stephen had learnt and were to 
learn to their cost. But the very men on whom his vio- 



A. D. 1 141. Stephen and Matilda. 21 

lence had fallen were his own ministers, justiciar, chan- 
cellor, and treasurer. The Church was in danger, the 
ministers were in prison ; justice, taxation, rp^^^ -^^^ 
police, everythinpr else was in abeyance ; and press Matil- 

. ,.,. , da arrives. 

just at the right time the empress landed. 
At Christmas 1139 the whole game was up: the land 
was divided, the empress had the west, Stephen the east ; 
the Church was in secession from the State. Roger died 
broken-hearted. Henry was negotiating with the em- 
press. The administration had come to naught, there were 
no courts of law, no revenue, no councils of the realm. 
There was not even strength for an honest open civil war. 
The year 1140 is filled with a mere record of anarchy. 
At the court at Whitsuntide only one bishop attended and 
he was a foreigner. Stephen we see now obdurate, now 
penitent ; now energetic, now despondent ; the barons 
selling their services for new promises from each side. 

It is now that the period begins which William of 
Newburgh likens to the days when there was no king 
in Israel, but every man did what was right Be<^inmng 
in his own eyes, nay, not what was right, but of anarchy. 
what was wrong also, for every lord was king and tyrant 
in his own house. Castles innumerable sprang up, and 
as fast as they were built they were filled with devils ; 
each lord judged and taxed and coined. The feudal 
spirit of disintegration had for once its full play. Even 
party union was at an end, and every baron fought on 
his own behalf. Feudalism had its day, and the com- 
pleteness of its triumph ensured its fall. 

All this was not realised at once. The new year 
1 141 found Stephen besieging Lincoln, which Stephen 
was defended by Ranulf, earl of Chester, and '^^^'^ 

•^ ' ' prisoner, 

Robert of Gloucester. Stephen had not yet 1141- 
been defeated in the field, and he had still by his side a 
considerable body of barons, though none so great as 



22 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1141. 

the almost independent earl whom he was attacking. 
Now, however, he was outmatched or out-generaled. 
After a struggle marked chiefly by his own valiant ex- 
ploits he was taken prisoner, and sent to the empress by 
her brother as a great prize. The battle of Lincoln was 
fought on February 2, and a week after Easter, in a great 
council of bishops, barons, and abbots, Matilda, the 
Election of cmprcss of the Romans, was elected Lady of 
Matilda. England at Winchester. This assembly was, 
it must be allowed, mainly clerical; but there is no 
doubt that it represented the wishes of a great part of 
the barons, who, so far as they were willing to have a 
king or queen at all, preferred Matilda to Stephen. 
Henry of Winchester, however, took advantage of the 
opportunity to make somewhat extravagant claims on 
behalf of his order, declaring that the clergy had the right 
to elect the sovereign, and actually carrying out the cere- 
mony of election. The citizens of London pleaded hard 
for the release of Stephen, whom they, six years before, 
had elected with scarcely less audacious assumption, but 
in vain. Henry was now at the crest of the wave, and 
he saw the triumph of the Church in the humiliation of 
his brother. War was the great trial by combat ordained 
between kings. Stephen had failed in that ordeal; judg- 
ment of God was declared against him ; like Saul he was 
found wanting. 

So Matilda became the Lady of the English ; she was 
not crowned, because perhaps the solemn consecration 
which she had received as empress sufficed, or perhaps 
Stephen's royalty was so far forth indefeasible ; but she 
acted as full sovereign nevertheless, executed charters, 
bestowed lands and titles, and exerted power sufficient to 
show that she had all the pride and tyrannical intolerance 
of her father, without his prudence or self-control. She, 
too, was on the crest of her wave and had her little day. 



A. D. 1 141. Stephen and Matilda. 23 

But the barons looked coolly on the triumph ; it was 
their policy that neither competitor should de~ Purpose of 
stroy the other, but that both should grow the barons. 
weaker and weaker, and so leave room for each several 
feudatory to grow stronger and stronger. Neither king 
nor empress had anything like command of his or her 
friends, or anything like general acceptance. 

Stephen's fortunes reached their lowest depth when 
the Londoners a few days before Midsummer received 
the empress as their sovereign. She had no Matilda's 
sooner achieved success than she began to imprudent 
alienate the friends who had won it for her. 
The bishop of Winchester, although he had not scrupled 
to sacrifice his brother's title to the exigencies of his 
policy, bore no grudge against the queen and her chil- 
dren, and endeavoured to prevail on the empress to 
guarantee to the latter at least their mother's inheritance. 
Matilda would be satisfied with nothing less than the utter 
ruin of the rival house, and although the queen was 
raising a great army in Kent for Stephen's liberation she 
refused even to temporise. Henry in disgust retired from 
court and took up his residence at Winchester ; thither 
the empress, having in vain attempted to recall him to 
her side, and having made London too hot to hold her, 
followed him, and established herself in the royal castle 
as he had done in the episcopal palace. Winchester 
thus witnessed the gathering of the two hosts for a new 
struggle. 

The queen brought up her army from Kent, the king 
of Scots and the earl of Gloucester brought up their 
forces from the north and west. But the queen showed 
the most promptitude. The baronage who were not 
bound to the legate's policy refused to complete the 
king's ruin, and stood aloof, intending to profit by the 
common weakness of the competitors. In attempting ta 



24 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1141. 

secure the empress's retreat to Devizes, on September 
The earl of 1 4, the earl of Gloucester was taken prisoner, 
Sk^n^^^^"^ and the two parties from this time forward 
prisoner. played with more equal chances. An ex- 
change of the two great captives was at once proposed, 
but mutual distrust, and the desire on both sides to take 
the utmost advantage of their situation, delayed the ne- 
gotiation for six weeks. Stephen at Bristol, Robert at 
Rochester, must have watched the debate with longing 
eyes. The countess Mabilia of Gloucester was prepared 
to ship Stephen off to Ireland if a hair of Robert's head 
were injured ; the queen demanded no less security for 
Exchange ^^^ husband's safety. At last, on All Saints' 
of prisoners. Day, both wcre released, each leaving security 
in the hands of the other that the terms should be fairly 
observed. 

As soon as they were free they both prepared for a 
continuance of the struggle. The empress fixed her court 
again at Oxford ; Stephen, who seems at once to have 
resumed his royal position, the claims founded by the 
election of the empress suffering a practical refutation by 
his release, re-entered London. The legate, still desiring 
to direct the storm, called a council at Westminster in 
December, where he apologised for his conduct rather 
than defended it, and where the king laid a formal com- 
plaint against the treason of the men who had taken and 
imprisoned him. But the time for open hostilities was 
deferred, the certain exhaustion which after a few months 
more renders the history an absolute blank, was beginning 
to tell. Six months passed without a sign. By Easter 
the empress had determined to send for her husband. 
Geoffrey would not obey his wife's summons until he 
had earl Robert's personal assurance that he should not 
be made a fool of. Earl Robert went to persuade his 
brother-in-law to throw his sword into the scale. Geof- 



A.D. 1142-1146. Stephen and Matilda, 25 

frey determined first to secure Normandy, and kept the 
earl at work there until the news from England peremp- 
torily recalled him. ^- 
Stephen had waited until Robert had left England, 
and then, emerging from his sick room, had pounced 
down upon Wareham, the strong castle which g^^ ^^.^ ^ 
the earl had entrusted to his son, had taken Stephen in 
it, and then hastening northwards, had burnt "'^^* 
the town of Oxford and shut up the empress in the 
castle. There she remained until her brother could suc- 
cour her. He returned at once, recovered Wareham and 
some castles in Dorset, and called together the forces of 
his party at Cirencester. But the winter was now ad- 
vancing ; the empress contrived a romantic escape in the 
snow from Oxford, and before active war could be re- 
sumed she directed that the castle should be surrendered. 
^ So the year 1142 comes to an end, and we see the two 
I parties resting in their exhaustion. The western shires 
acknowledged Matilda, who reigned at Glou- -^j^^ 
cester ; the eastern acknowledged Stephen, kingdom 
who made Kent his head-quarters. The mid- ^^^ ^ ' 
land counties were the seat of languid warfare, partly 
carried on about Oxford, which was a central debating 
ground between the two competitors, partly in Lincoln- 
shire and Essex, where Stephen had to keep in order 
those great nobles who aimed at independence. Geoffrey 
de Mandeville, the earl of Essex, who accepted his earl- 
dom from both the courts, employed him chiefly in 1143 
and 1 144. The earl of Chester, who was uniformly op- 
posed to Stephen, but who no doubt fought for himself 
far more than for the empress, held Lincoln as a constant 
thorn in the royal side. In 1 145 Oxfordshire and Berk- 
shire were the seat of war ; in 1146 Stephen surprised 
the earl of Chester at Northampton and compelled him 
to give up Lincoln, and now for the first time seems to 



26 The Early Plantagenets, a.d. 1146. 

have thought himself a king. In despite of all prece- 
dent and all prejudice, defying a superstition to which 
even Henry 11. thought it "wise to bow, that no king 
should wear his crown within the walls of Lincoln, he 
wore his crown there on Christmas Day. 

In passing thus rapidly over these years we are but 
following the example of our historians, who share in the 
Period of exhaustion of the combatants, recording little 
anarchy. but an occasional affray and a complaint of 
general misery. Neither side had strength to keep down 
its friends, much less to encounter its enemies. The 
price of the support given to both was the same — abso- 
lute licence to build castles, to practise private war, to 
hang their private enemies, to plunder their neighbours, 
to coin their money, to exercise their petty tyrannies 
as they pleased. England was dismembered. North of 
the Tees ruled the king of Scots, David the lawgiver 
and the church builder, under whose rule Cumberland, 
Westmoreland, and Northumberland were safe ; the 
bishopric of Durham, too, under his wing, had peace. 
The West of England, as we have seen, was under the 
earl of Gloucester, who in his sister's name founded earl- 
doms, and endeavoured to concentrate in the hands of 
his supporters such vestiges of the administrative organi- 
sation as still subsisted. But the great earls of the house 
of Beaumont, Roger of Leicester and Waleran of Meulan, 
who dominated the midland shires, chose to act as inde- 
pendent sovereigns and made terms both in England 
and Normandy as if they had been kings. 

In all the misery, and exhaustion, and balance of 
evils, however, time was working. The first generation 
of actors was leaving the stage, and a new one — if not 
better, still freed from the burden of odium, duplicity, and 
dishonesty which had marked the first — came into play. 
And the balance of change veered now to vStephen's side. 



A. D. 1 147- Stephen and Matilda. 27 

The year 1145 cut off Geoffrey de Mandeville in the midst 
of his sins, the year 1143 had seen the death of Miles of 
Hereford, the empress's most faithful servant. In 1147 
the great earl Robert of Gloucester passed away, and it 
is no small sign of the absolute deadness of Departure 
the country at the time, that both his death of Matilda. 
and the departure of the empress, which must have 
almost coincided with it, are not even noticed in the best 
of the contemporary historians. 

This year 1147 sees Stephen again ostensibly the sole 
ruler; really, however, devoid of power, as he had al- 
ways been of counsel, his only strength being ^j^^ second 
the weakness of everyone else. This year is Crusade, 
marked by the great crusade of the emperor Conrad of 
Hohenstaufen, and of Lewis VII., and Eleanor of Aqui- 
taine, an expedition in which England nationally had no 
share, and in which few of the barons took part, but 
which was recruited to a considerable extent by volun- 
teers from the Enghsh ports. The capture of Lisbon 
from the Moors, and the placing of the kingdom of 
Portugal upon a sound footing thereby, was the work 
mainly of the English pilgrims, but it was not a national 
work, and it touches our history merely as suggesting a 
probability that some of our most turbulent spirits may 
have joined the crusade, and thereby increased the chances 
of peace at home. With 1 147, then, begins a new series 
of movements and a new set of actors, the details ot 
whose doings are involved and obscure. 

The death of earl Robert and the departure of the 
empress left their party without an ostensible head; 
for Geoffrey of Anjou was far more intent on securing 
Normandy than England, and his son Henry was only 
just springing into manhood, David of Scotland being 
looked upon apparently as the guardian of his interests. 
Henry of Winchester had lost the legation, which had 



28 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1148. 

given him such great strength in the earher part of the 
Proceedings Struggle ; the popes who had conferred it and 
at Rome. promised to renew it, had rapidly given way to 
successors who were less favourable, and the chair of St. 
Peter was now filled by Eugenius III., the friend of St. 
Bernard, who was at this time the great spiritual power 
in European politics. The scantiness of our authorities 
does not allow us to speak with certainty, or to decide 
whether St. Bernard in the English quarrel was moved 
by a conviction of Stephen's wrong-doing, or by the in- 
fluence of the Cistercian order; it is, however, certain 
that the king and his brother by attempting to force their 
nephew, afterwards canonised as St. William, into the see 
of York, in opposition to the Cistercian abbot of Foun- 
tains, had thrown that strong order, of which Bernard 
was the ornament, into opposition ; and it is also cer- 
tain that the strings of political intrigue . were held by 
Eugenius III., and that every possible advantage was 
given by him to Henry of Anjou. The Englishman, 
Nicolas of St. Alban's, afterwards pope Adrian IV., 
was a close confidant of the pope, and John of Salisbury, 
the friend of Becket, was a close confidant of Nicolas ; 
Becket was the clerk and secretary of Archbishop Theo- 
bald of Canterbury. These may have been the three 
strands of a strong diplomatic cord. The first impulse, 
however, which was to bring about Stephen's final hu- 
miliation was, as before, given by himself. In 1148, 
Eugenius III. called a council at Rheims. Archbishop 
Theobald asked leave to go. Stephen suspected that a 
plot would be concocted on behalf of the empress and 
Quarrel ■'^^^ ^^^ 5 Henry of Winchester suspected that 

with the the archbishop wanted to apply for the lega- 

tion. Leave was therefore refused, and Theo- 
bald went without leave ; Stephen took the measures 
usual in such cases, confiscation and threats, and sent 



A. D. 1 149- Stephen and Matilda. 29 

his chief ministers, Richard de Lucy and WilHam Martel, 
to counteract the archbishop's influence in the council. 
This had the effect of throwing Theobald, who had 
hitherto only been restrained by his oath of allegiance 
from taking the side of the empress, openly into the arms 
of her party; so much so that he preferred exile to sub- 
mission, and even went so far as to consecrate the cele- 
brated Gilbert Foliot, the abbot of Gloucester, and 
nominee of Henry of Anjou, to the see of Hereford, in 
opposition to both king and bishops. Neither Stephen 
nor Theobald was, however, as yet in a position to act 
freely. Stephen confiscated and Theobald excommuni- 
cated, but a hollow peace was patched up between them 
in the autumn by Hugh Bigot and the bishops. 

In 1 149, Henry of Anjou, now sixteen years old, was 
knighted by his great uncle David, at Carlisle. Stephen, 
accounting this the beginning of war, hastened Question of 
to York; but went no farther, and that cloud succession, 
seemed to have passed away. The king was growing 
old, and it was necessary for him to secure the succes- 
sion to his son Eustace ; the military interest of the time, 
always very languid, now flags altogether, and the real 
business is conducted at the papal court. There, as 
usual, fortune seems to halt according to the depth of 
the purses of the rivals, the balance, however, in the 
main inclining as the pope would have it. Sometimes 
there is talk of peace ; now the bishop of Winchester is 
to be made archbishop of Wessex, now Theobald is to 
have the legation ; now the bishops are persuaded to re- 
cognise Eustace, now they are forbidden peremptorily to 
do any such thing. And this goes on for five years, Ste- 
phen relieving the monotony of the time by an occa- 
sional expedition into the West of England. 

Henry, however, was making good use of his time on 
the Continent, Eustace, whose marriage with Constantia 



30 The Early Planiagenets. a.d. 1152. 

of France, a marriage purchased by the treasures of 
Pro ressof bishop Rogcr in 1 1 39, made him a dangerous 
Henry of competitor, laid claim to Normandy, Geof- 
^^^^' frey, after defending it on his son's behalf 

during two years, finally made it over to him in 1 151 and 
then died. Henry the next year married Eleanor of 
Aquitaine, the divorced wife of Lewis VIL, and so se- 
cured nearly the whole of Western France. By the 
Christmas of 1152 he was ready to make a bold stroke 
for England also. 

And England was ready for him. The bishops were 
watching for their time. The young Eustace was offend- 
ing and oppressing. The king had now thrown the great 
house of Leicester as well as the prelates into determined 
opposition. The cessation of justice and the prevalence 
of private war made everyone long for any change that 
would bring rest. In 11 52 the bishops, acting under 
instructions from Rome, finally refused to sanction the 
coronation of Eustace, and Stephen, having again tried 
t. ■ \ c force, was compelled to acquiesce. But he 
Henry, saw the end approaching. In January 1153 

^^^^' Henry of Anjou landed. His friends gathered 

round him, Stephen and Eustace collected their mer- 
cenaries. At Malmesbury, and again at Wallingford, the 
two armies stood face to face, but the great barons re- 
fused to abide by the decision of arms ; on both occasions 
they mediated, and the armies separated without a blow. 
Just after the second meeting Eustace died, and Stephen 
"^whose health was failing, who had lost his noble-hearted 
wife in 11 52, and whose surviving children were too 
young to be exposed to the chances or risks of a dis- 
Ne otia- puted succcssion, could only give way. The 
tions for negotiations, begun at Wallingford, were car- 
peace, ^.^^ ^^ ^^^ completed by a treaty at West- 

minster, concluded in November, in which Stephen 



A. D. 1 1 54. Stephen and Matilda. 31 

recognised Henry as his heir, and Henry guaranteed 
the rights of Stephen's children to the inheritance of 
their parents. At the same time a scheme of reform, 
which was to replace the administrative system of Henry 
I. on its basis, was determined on, the details of which 
form a clue to the early policy of the reign of Henry II. 
Henry left England some three months after the conclu- 
sion of the peace. His life, it was said, was not safe, 
and the pressure which he had to put upon Stephen to 
induce him to carry out the reforms was only too likely 
to result in the renewal of war. He went away about 
Easter 11 54. Stephen blundered on for six Stephen's 
months and then died; not of a broken heart, death, 1154. 
perhaps, as the kings of history generally die, but cer- 
tainly a disappointed man. 

The reign of Stephen was, it may be fairly said, the 
period at which all the evils of feudalism came in Eng- 
land into full bearing, previous to being cut off and 
abolished for ever under his great successor. The reign 
exemplifies to us what the whole century that followed 
the Conquest must have been if there had not been 
strong kings like William I. and Henry I. sturdily to 
repress all the disintegrating designs of their barons 
and to protect the people. The personal cha- Estimate of 
racter of Stephen needs no comment. He was Stephen's 
brave. He was at least so far gentle that none 
of the atrocious cruelties alleged against his predecessors 
are attributed to him. He was false, partly no doubt 
under the pressure of circumstances, which he could not 
control, but in which he had involved himself by his first 
betrayal of faith. What may be the legal force of his 
election by the nation we need not ask : it was the 
breach of his oath that condemned him. No man trusted 
him; and as he trusted no one, knowing that he did not 
deserve trust, and that those who had betrayed their 



32 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1154. 

oath to his uncle would not hesitate to betray their 
oaths to him, he expected no one to trust him. He 
was not great, either for good or for evil, in himself. . If 
he had had more wisdom he might have shown more 
honesty ; certainly if he had been more honest he would 
have gained more credit for wisdom. Had he been 
either a more unscrupulous knave or a more honest 
man he would certainly have been far more successful. 



CHAPTER HI. 

THE EARLY YEARS OF HENRY II. 

Terms of Henry's accession — His character — His early reforms — 
His relations with France — War of Toulouse — Summary of nine 
years' work. 

Very few epochs of history are more clearly marked 

than the accession of Henry II. Most great eras are 

determined, and their real importance ascer- 

Importance . 

attached by tamed, long after the event ; the famous Par- 
rarielT"" lament of Simon de Montfort, in 1265, for 
Henry's instance, is scarcely named by the contempo- 

accession. , . . , , . . . 

rary historians, and only rises into importance 
as later history unfolds its real bearings. But the succes- 
sion of Henry is hailed by the writers of his time as a dawn 
of hope, a certain omen of restoration and refreshing. 
Often and often, it is true, such omens are discerned on 
the accession of a new king ; men hasten to salute the 
rising sun ; good wishes to the new sovereign take the 
form of prophecy, and, where they are fulfilled, partly help 
on their own fulfilment. Here, however, we have omens 
that were amply fulfilled, and an epoch which those who 
lived in it were the first to recognise. The fact proves 
how weary England was of Stephen's incompetency, how 
thoroughly she had learned the miserable consequences 



CH. III. Early Years of Henry II. 33 

of a feudal system of society unchecked by strong go- 
vernment, how readily she welcomed the young and 
inexperienced but strong and, in the main, honest rule 
of Henry, 

Henry II. was born in 1133 ; and if we may believe 
the testimony of Roger Hoveden, who was one of his 
chaplains, and a very conscientious compiler youth and 
of histories, he was recognised by Henry I. as education of 
his successor directly after his birth. When ^^^^' 
his grandfather died he was two years old. His father 
and mother made, as we have seen, a very ill-concerted 
effort to secure the succession, and it was not until the 
boy was eight years old that the struggle for the crown 
really began. In 1141 he was brought to England; 
then no doubt he learned a dutiful hatred of Stephen, 
and was trained in the use of arms ; but whether he re- 
ceived his training under his father in France or under 
his uncle, Robert of Gloucester, in England, or under his 
great uncle, David of Scotland, we are not told. Only 
we know that, when he was sixteen, he was knighted 
at Carlisle by King David ; that, like a wise boy, he 
determined to secure his French dominions before he 
attempted the recovery of England; that he succeeded 
to Normandy and Anjou in 1151, whenhe was eighteen; 
married his wife, the Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine who 
had been divorced from Lewis VII., and secured her in- 
heritance, when he was nineteen; that he came again to 
England and forced Stephen to submitto terms whenhewas 
twenty; and that at the age of twenty-one he succeeded 
him on the throne in pursuance of those terms. These 
dates are sufficient to prove that, although Henry might 
have got considerable experience in arms as a boy and 
young man, he could scarcely have had yet the educa- 
tion of a lawgiver. Somewhat of politics he might have 
learnt, but he had not had time or opportunity to learn 

M. H. D 



34 The Early Plantagenets. ch. hi. 

a regular theory of policy, or to create a method of 
government which, when the time for action came, he 
might put into execution, 'The extraordinary power which 
he showed when the time for action really arrived was 
in part a gift of genius; partly too it arose from his 
wisdom in choosing experienced advisers, and partly it was 
an effect of his following the broad lines of his grand- 
father's administrative reforms. 

Henry II. was a very great sovereign in many ways: 
he was an admirable soldier, most careful in forming 
Character of pl^ns, wonderfully rapid in the execution of 
Henry II. them ; he was at once cautious and adventu- 
rous, sparing of human life and moderate in the use ot 
victory. Yet he was far from being a mild or gentle 
enemy; and he was economical of human life rather 
because of its cost in money than from any pitifulness. 
If he spared an enemy it was only when he had entirely 
disabled him from doing harm, or when he was fully as- 
sured of his power to turn him into a friend. His foes 
accused him of being treacherous, but his treachery 
mainly consisted in letting them deceive themselves. 
Thus he was no hero of probity, and his craft may have 
gone farther in the direction of cunning than was ap- 
proved by the rough diplomacy of his time. He is said 
to have had a maxim, that it is easier to repent of words 
than of deeds, and therefore wiser to break your word 
than to fulfil an inconvenient obligation ; but it cannot 
His family ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ facts of history show him to 
policy. have acted upon this shameless avowal, cap- 

tious and unscrupulous as his policy more than once 
appears. He had no doubt a difficult part to play. His 
dominions brought him into close contact with all the 
great sovereigns of Europe. He had considerable ambi- 
tions — for himself, to hold fast all that he had acquired by 
inheritance and marriage; for his sons, to obtain by mar- 



CH. III. Early Years of Henry II. 35 

riage or other settlement provinces which, united to their 
hereditary provision, might make them either a family of 
allied sovereigns or an imperial federation under himself, 
and in each form the mightiest house in Christendom. 
Such a network of design was spread before him from 
the first. As the head of the house of Anjou the kings 
and princes of Palestine regarded him as their His great 
family representative, the grandson of King christen-'^ 
Fulk, and the man created for the re-conquest dom. 
of the East. To him in their utmost need they sent the 
offer of their crown, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and 
of the Tower of David. As the head of the Normans 
he was looked up to by the Sicilian king as the presump- 
tive successor, and had the strange fortune and self- 
restraint to decline the offer of a second crown. The 
Italians thought him a likely competitor for the empire 
when they saw him negotiating for his son John a mar- 
riage with the heiress of Savoy, which would give him 
the command of the passes of the Alps ; Spain saw in 
him the leader of a new crusade against the Moors when 
he sought for his son Richard a bride in the Princess 
of Aragon, whose portion would give him the passes of 
the Pyrenees. Frederick Barbarossa might well feel sus- 
picious when he heard that English gold was given to 
build the walls of Milan, and when he remembered that 
Henry the Lion, the great Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, 
the head of the Welfic house, his cousin and friend 
whom with heavy heart he had sacrificed to the neces- 
sities of state, was also son-in-law of the king of the Eng- 
lish. So wide a system of foreign alliances and designs 
helped to make Henry both cautious and crafty. 

Nearer home his ability was tasked by Lewis VIL, 
whose whole policy consisted in a habit of 
pious falsehood, who really acted upon the ^^'^ 
principle which Henry ironically formulated, and who by 



36 The Early Plantagenets. ch. hi. 

either cowardice or faithlessness made himself far more 
dangerous than by his strength. 

Henry was a kind and loving father, but his political 
game led him to sacrifice the real interest of his children 
Henry's to the design for their advancement. They 
mismanage- goon found out that he used them like chess- 

ment 01 ms 

children. men, and could not see the love which prompted 
his design. To his people he was a politic ruler, a great 
reformer and discipliner ; not a hero or patriot, but a 
far-seeing king who recognised that the wellbeing of the 
nation was the surest foundation of his own power. As a 
lawgiver or financier, or supreme judge, he made his hand 
felt everywhere; and at the beginning of his reign, when 
the need of the reforms was forcibly impressed on the 
minds of his subjects by their recent misery, his reforms 
were welcomed; he was popular and beloved. By and 
by, when he had educated a new generation, and when 
the dark cloud of sin and sorrow and ingratitude settled 
down upon him, they forgot what he had done in his 
early days ; but they never forgot how great a king he 
was. We may not say that he was a good man ; but his 
temptations were very great, and he was sinned against 
very much by his wife and children. It is only in a 
secondary sense that he was a good king, for he loved his 
power first and his people only second ; but he was good 
so far as selfish wisdom and deep insight into what is 
good for them could make him. In his early years he gave 
promise of something more than this, and some share of 
the blame that attends his later shortcomings must rest 
with those who scrupled at nothing that might humiliate 
and disappoint him. 

In appearance, we are told, Henry was a tall, stout 
man, with a short neck, and projecting but very ex- 
pressive eyes; he was a careless dresser, a great hunter, a 
man of business rather than a model of chivalry; capable 



A.D. 1 153- Early Years of Henry II. $y 

of great exertion, moderate in meat and drink, and any- 
thing but extravagant in personal as opposed to official 
expenditure. He was a builder of halls and castles, not 
veiy much of churches; but that may easily be accounted 
for. We are glad to have him pictured for us even with 
this scanty amount of detail, for he is well worth the trouble 
of an attempt at least to realise his outward presentment. 
Everyone knows Henry VIII. by sight ; it might be as 
well if we had as definite an impression of Henry II. 

We have observed, in sketching the close of the last 
reign, the existence of certain terms by which Henry and 
Stephen, after or in preparation for the peace pi^^ of 
of November 1153, agreed that the country reform. 
should be governed. Those terms are not preserved in 
any formal document, but they occur in two or three of 
the historians of the time, in a somewhat poetical garb, 
disguised in language adapted partly from the prophecies 
of Merlin, king Arthur's seer, which were in vogue at the 
time, and partly from the words of Holy Scripture; and 
yet, from the clue they furnish to the reforms actually 
carried out by Henry, they seem to be based upon certain 
real articles of agreement. 

By these terms the administration of justice was to be 
restored, sheriffs to be appointed to the counties, and a 
careful examination into their honesty and Terms of 
justice to be instituted ; the castles which pacification. 
had been built since the death of Henry I, were to be 
destroyed; the coinage was to be renewed, a uniform 
silver currency of lawful weight; the mercenaries who 
had flooded the kingdom under Stephen were to be sent 
back to their own countries ; the estates which had been 
usurped were to go to their lawful owners ; all property 
alienated from the crown was to be resumed, especially 
the pensions on the Exchequer with which Stephen en- 
dowed his newly-created earls ; the royal demesnes were 



38 The Early Plantagenets, a.d. 1153. 

to be re-stocked, the flocks to return to the hills, the 
husbandman to the plough, the merchant to his wares ; 
the swords were to be turned into ploughshares and the 
spears into pruning- hooks. 

These sentences give us a clue to Henry's reforms ; 
that is, they show us clearly the evils that first called for 
Meaning of ^^^ attention. The kingdom, divided in two 
these terms, under Stephen, had been in constant war ; 
the barons on one side had entered on the lands of the 
barons on the other ; Stephen had confiscated the estates 
of Matilda's friends in the East of England, Matilda 
had retaliated or authorised reprisals in the West. All 
this must be set right. /The crown had been the greatest 
loser, and the impoverishment of the crown involved the 
oppression of the people. Henry gained the crown by a 
national act ; he must then resume not only the wasteful 
grants of Stephen but those of his mother also, and, in 
his character of king, know neither friends nor foes 
amongst his own people. So the Exchequer, the board 
which managed the royal revenue, must be placed on 
its old footing, and under its old managers. With the 
Exchequer would revive the ancient office of the sheriffs, 
to whom both the collection of revenue, the administra- 
tion of justice in the shires, and the maintenance of the 
military force was entrusted. Thus local security would 
restore and revive trade and commerce. And when the 
local administration of the sheriff was revived, no doubt 
the feudal usurpations of the lords of castles and manors 
must end. The fortified houses must be pulled down ; 
no more should the petty tyrants tax and judge their 
men, fight their battles like independent princes, and 
coin their money as so many kings. The great Peace 
should be restored, of which the king was guardian and 
keeper. In fact, the golden age was to return. Nor 
was it to be delayed until Henry came to the crown; it 



^ 



A.D. 1 1 54. Early Years of Henry II. 39 

was to be Stephen's last and expiatory task to bring 
about these happy results. Stephen, as we saw, wanted 
either the will or the power to accomplish it. 

Stephen died on October 25, 1154. Henry was in 
France at the time, and was not able, owing to the 
weather, to reach England before December p^j^\y^ of 
8. During this time the management of affairs Henry as 

successor 

rested with Archbishop Theobald of Canter- to Stephen, 
bury, and in some measure perhaps with his ^^54- 
secretary, Thomas Becket, who had been so busy in 
negotiating the succession of Henry. Although it was 
the theory that during the vacancy of the throne all law 
and police were suspended, and no one could be punished 
for offences committed in a general abeyance of justice, 
the country remained quiet during these six weeks. 
Perhaps the rogues were cowed by the apprehension of 
a strong king coming, perhaps the religious obedience 
inculcated by the archbishop was really maintained; 
perhaps the same bad weather that kept Henry in Nor- 
mandy kept thieves and robbers within doors. Nor 
was there any political rising during the interregnum. 
Stephen's children were not thought of, at least on this 
side of the Channel, as rivals to Henry. The Bishop of 
Winchester had learnt moderation, that might in him 
well pass for wisdom; he might well feel that Henry's 
his position was a hazardous one, to be main- advisers. 
tained only by caution ; and he had no reason, nor excuse 
for seeking a reason, for evading the compact which he 
had had a chief hand in making. It shows, however, his 
importance that as soon as Henry landed, which he did 
near Southampton, he hastened to Winchester, Bishop of 
and there visited his powerful kinsman, who, Winchester. 
as we learn, was now busily employed in collecting 
statues and sculpture from southern Europe, and with 
whom he made a friendship which, although once or 



40 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1154. 

twice seriously endangered, was never actually broken. 
Amongst the other leaders who likewise had learned 
The wisdom we must count the Empress Matilda, 

Empress. who, Strange to say, appears to us no more as 
the arrogant, self-willed virago, but as a sage politician 
and a wise, modest, pious old lady, living at Rouen, and 
ruling Normandy in the name of her son with prudent 
counsel. Not a word is said now of her succeeding to 
the throne or even resigning her rights to Henry; all 
that was regarded as arranged by the settlement made 
with Stephen. Henry succeeded without a competitor. 
Stephen's minister, Richard de Lucy, became his minister. 
Theobald Theobald continued to be, as his office ma.de 
and Becket. him, the great constitutional adviser ; and, to 
reconcile personal convenience with constitutional prece- 
dent, he presented his secretary to the king as his future 
Chancellor. Thomas Becket thus entered on his high 
and fatal office. 

All this done, Henry appeared at Westminster on 

the 19th of December, and was there crowned with the 

ceremonies observed at his grandfather's coro- 

Coronation. . , t ■^r 

nation, now more than half a century past, 
and bound himself by the same ancient and solemn pro- 
mises which Ethelred had made to Dunstan, and which 
the Conqueror, Henry L, and Stephen had renewed. 
Nor, when crowned, did he lose a moment : he issued a 
charter, as Stephen had done, at his coronation, confirm- 
ing his grandfather's laws. The same week he held a 
great court and council at Bermondsey. At once he re- 
established the Exchequer, recalling to the head of it 
Bishop Nigel of Ely, whom Stephen had displaced in 
Banishm nt ^^4°' ^^^ Setting at work at once with the 
of mercena- business of the revenue. From this court at 

Bermondsey went forth the decree that the 
Flemish and other foreign mercenaries should leave the 



A.D. 1 154. Early Years of Henry II. 41 

kingdom at once, and that the castles built under Stephen 
should be thrown down. The mercenaries fled forthwith. 
Their presence was perhaps the most offensive of all 
insults to the national pride, and the late reign had 
taught Normans and Englishmen that they had now a 
common nationality in suffering, if not in conquest. By 
this article of the agreement Henry faithfully stood. 
Although he fought all his foreign wars with mercenaries, 
he never but once — and that in the greatest emergency, 
and to repel foreign mercenaries brought against him by 
the rebellious earls in 11 74 — introduced any such force 
into England. Even Richard employed in the kingdom 
no more foreigners than formed his ordinary surround- 
ings, and it is not until John's reign that we find the 
country again oppressed and insulted by hired foreign 
soldiery. 

The demolition of the castles, which one contempo- 
rary writer reckons at three hundred and seventy-five, 
another a little later at eleven hundred and Destruction 
fifteen, was a still greater boon ; for these, had of castles, 
they been suffered to stand, would not only have fitted 
England to be a constant scene of civil war, but have 
continued to afford to their owmers a shadow of claim 
for the exercise of those feudal jurisdictions which on the 
Continent made every baron a petty despot. Castles were 
unfortunately not entirely destroyed at this time; the 
older strongholds, which had been built under Henry I., 
were untouched, and gave trouble enough in the one civil 
war that marks the reign ; but the legal misuse of them 
was abolished, and they ceased to be centres of feudal 
lawlessness. 

Another measure which must have been taken at the 
coronation, when all the recognised earls did y2X^ of the 
their homage and paid their ceremonial ser- new earls, 
vices, seems to have been the degrading or cashiering 



42 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1154. 

of the supposititious earls created by Stephen and Ma- 
tilda. Some of these may have obtained recognition by 
getting new grants ; but those who lost endowment and 
dignity at once, like William of Ypres, the leader of the 
Flemish mercenaries, could make no terms. They sank 
to the rank from which they had been so incautiously 
raised. 

The resumption of royal estates, and the restoration 
of the dispossessed on each side, was probably a much 
Resumption i^ore difficult business than the humiliation of 
of lands. the earls. Doubtless the enemies of Henry.'s 
mother would bear their reverses silently, to avoid entire 
ruin ; or only those would think of continuing in opposi- 
tion who had no hope but in terms which might be 
granted to pertinacious resistance ; but Matilda's sup- 
porters might well think it hard that they should be 
called upon to resign their hardwon gains. Still, Henry 
was a national king; the resumption of domain was 
not an Angevin conquest ; it was a national restoration 
of the state of affairs as it stood before the beginning of 
the national quarrel. As a matter of fact only two or 
Resistance three of the nobles made any resistance. Wil- 
of William Ham of Aumalc, the Lord of Holderness, who 
had commanded at the Battle of the Standard, 
and who played the part of a petty king in Yorkshire, 
objected to surrender his great castle at Scarborough. 
He, of course, had been on Stephen's side,' and was, in- 
deed, a member of the House of Champagne — the son 
of that Count Stephen who had been brought forward 
by the Norman earls as competitor with William Rufus. 
Of Matilda's old friends, Hugh Mortimer, the lord of 
Wigmore, and Roger of Hereford, the son of Miles the 
Constable, declined to submit. The King of Scots too, 
Malcolm IV., grandson of King David and half-cousin 
of Henry, although the Northern counties had been held 



A.D. 1 155. Early Years of Henry II. 43 

in trust for Henry, wished to retain them for himself. In 
January 1155, however, Henry marched northwards and 
brought the Count of Aumale to his feet. In March he 
was at London holding council for the resto- ^ 

, , . Surrender of 

ration of peace and the confirmation of the the malcon- 
ancient laws. He declared that neither ^^'^'^^' 
friend nor foe should be spared. Roger of Hereford 
immediately surrendered. Hugh of Mortimer still held 
out, and did not submit until Henry had called out 
the national force for the capture of Bridgenorth. On 
exactly the same ground it was that Henry I. had won 
his victory over Robert of Belesme, when in 1102 he 
laid the axe to the tree of feudal misrule, and his sub- 
jects, rejoicing at the overthrow of the oppressor, hailed 
him as now for the first time a king. This was accom- 
plished in July. And this was a permanent pacification ; 
it was nearly twenty years before anything like rebellion 
reared its head. 

The history of the first year of Henry's reign is not, 
however, filled up thus. He restored the administration 
of justice, and sent itinerant members of his Restoration 
judicial court to enforce the law which had of judica- 
been so long in abeyance. He himself learned 
the law as an apt scholar. Even at Bridgenorth he found 
time to hear suits brought before him as supreme judge ; 
at Nottingham, whilst he was on his way from Scar- 
borough, he threatened William Peverell with a charge 
of having poisoned the Earl of Chester. The very threat 
caused Peverell to take refuge in a monastery. Frequent 
He held council after council, taking advice councils. 
from his elders, and making friends everywhere. In one 
assembly held at Wallingford after Easter he obtained 
the recognition of his little son William, who afterwards 
died, as his successor. In another, held at Winchester, 
at Michaelmas, he proposed that the conquest of Ireland 



44 The Early Plaiitagenets. a.d, 1157. 

should be attempted and a kingdom founded there for 
Proposal to ^^^ brother William. The empress objected 
conquer to this, and it was given up, at least during 

her life, although the EngUsh Pope, Adrian 
IV., by his famous Bull Laudabiliter, issued about this 
time, was already anxious to give the papal authorisation 
to a scheme that would complete the symmetrical confor- 
mation of Western Christendom. A national expedition, 
Henry may have thought, would do more than anything 
else to consolidate the national unity which was growing 
rapidly into more than a name. But clearly the time 
was not come for England, shorn of her Northern 
provinces, and with the Welsh unsubdued, to attempt 
foreign conquest; and Henry had other states besides 
England to take thought for. 

The whole of the next year he had to spend in 
Normandy and Anjou, and, when he returned in 1157, 
he found abundant work ready for his hands in his still 
undetermined relations with Wales and Scotland. His 
first visit was to the Eastern counties, and there he 
combined business with pleasure. William of War- 
enne. Count of Boulogne and Earl of Surrey, the 
son of Stephen, had received a considerable estate in 
Norfolk, including the castle of Norwich; and Hugh 

Hugh Bigot -^i&*^t> th^ ^^^1 °f ^^ county of Norfolk, the 
humbled, same Hugh who had sworn that Henry I. 
disinherited the empress, was very reluctant 
to accept the strong rule of the new king. Whether 
Hugh was now acting on behalf of Stephen's family or 
in opposition to them is not clear. It was his attitude 
that drew the king into that country. He was made to 
surrender his castles ; and William of Warenne likewise 
surrendered his special provision, on the understanding 
that he was to receive his hereditary estates. Henry 
added solemnity to this visit by holding a solemn court 



A.D. 1 157- Early Years of Henry II, 45 

and wearing his crown in state on Whit- Sunday, at St. 
Edmund's, the second recorded coronation-day Second 
of the reign. This ceremony was a revival of coronation. 
the great courts held by the Conqueror and his sons on 
the great festivals, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, 
at Gloucester, Westminster, and Winchester, the three 
chief cities of the South. At such gatherings all the great 
men attended, both witan and warriors, clerk and lay. 
The king heard the complaints of his subjects, and de- 
cided their suits with the advice of his wise men ; the 
feudal services, by which the great estates were held, were 
solemnly rendered ; a special peace was set, the breakers 
of which within the purlieus of the court were liable to 
special penalties; and during the gathering, whilst the 
people were amused and humoured by the show, the 
king and his really trusted advisers contrived the de- 
spatch of business. The ceremony of coronation, which 
gave the name to these courts, was not, as is sometimes 
supposed, a repetition of the formal rite of initiation by 
which the king at his accession received the authorisa- 
tion of God through the hands of the bishops ; the cha- 
racter so impressed was regarded as indelible, and hence 
the only way of disposing of a bad king was to kill him. 
That rite, the solemn consecration and unction, was in- 
capable of being repeated. The crown was, however, on 
these occasions placed on the king's head in his chamber 
by the archbishop of Canterbury, with special prayers, 
and the court went in procession to mass, where the king 
made his offering, and afterwards the barons did their 
services, as at the real coronation. These courts had 
been given up by Stephen, as the historian Henry of 
Huntingdon notes with an expressive lamentation, in 
the year 1 140, when the clergy ceased to attend them; 
and he had made only one unlucky attempt, the Lin- 
coln coronation, in 1 147, to revive them. Henry, however, 



46 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1158, 

renewed the custom on this occasion, and twice after 
this we find it observed. At the Christmas of this 
year he was crowned at Lincoln, but not, hke Stephen, 
in the cathedral, for he feared the omen ; and at Easter 
1 158 he was crowned at Worcester. After that he never 
actually wore the crown again, although he did occa- 
sionally hold these formal courts, in order to receive 
the honorary services by which his courtiers held their 
estates. This coronation, then, at St. Edmund's was, as 
usual, turned to purposes of business. The king was 
ready for a Welsh war; measures were taken for pro- 
viding men and money. 

At another council, held in July, at Northampton, the 
expedition started. This was Henry's first Welsh war. 
First Welsh '^'^^ ^^ was no great success. The army ad- 
war. vanced into North Wales; at Consilt, near 

Flint, an awkward pass, they were resisted by the Welsh. 
There Henry of Essex, the Constable, let fall the royal 
standard, as he declared, by accident. The army, think- 
ing that the king was killed or the battle lost, fell into 
confusion, and the day was claimed by the Welsh as a 
victory. That it was merely a misfortune of little im- 
portance is proved by the fact that Henry continued his 
march to Rhuddlan. The ostensible pretext of the expe- 
pedition being to arrange a quarrel between Owen Gwyn- 
neth and his brother Cadwalader, there was no overt 
attempt at conquest. The king returned from Wales 
into Nottinghamshire to meet the young Malcolm IV., 
who seems at this time to have finally surrendered his 
hold on the Northern counties. At Christmas Henry 
was at Lincoln. 

In 1 158 he wore his crown, as we have seen, at Easter, 
at Worcester ; in the summer he went into Cumberland, 
no doubt to set the machinery of government at work 
there in due order after the change of rulers ; and at 



A.D. 1 158. Early Years of Henry II. 47 

Carlisle on Midsummer-day he conferred knighthood on 
William of Warenne. In August he went to ^^^ ^j^j^. 
France, whence he did not return until January to France, 
1163. This brings us to the point of time at "^ " ^' 
which the struggle with Becket begins, to which, with its 
attendant circumstances, we may devote another chapter. 
We may, therefore, now take up the thread of the 
foreign transactions at the beginning of the reign and 
bring it down to the same point. The geo- p^^^j 
graphical extent of Henry's dominions fur- possessions 
nishes the leading clue to this part of his ° ^^^' 
history. They embraced, speaking roughly and roundly, 
Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Guienne, Poictou, 
and Gascony. But this statement has to be accepted 
with some very important limitations. In the first place, 
each of these states, and each bundle of them, had come 
to him in a different way — some from his father, some 
from his mother, some by his wife — and each bundle had 
been got together by those from whom he received it in 
similar ways. The result of that was that in each state or 
bundle of states there was a distinct relation between 
the lord and his vassals— a constitution, we might call it, 
by which various rights and privileges and a varying 
legal system or customs subsisted. What was His 
law in Normandy was not customary in ^jt^hF^ 
Anjou; and the barons of Poictou had, or vassals. 
claimed, customs which must, if they could have en- 
forced them, have produced utter anarchy. Here was 
a constant and abundant source of administrative diffi- 
culties, the adjustment of which was one of the causes 
of Henry's long absence from England. But a second 
incidental result was, that, as many of these estates 
came into the common inheritance on very deficient 
title, conquest in one case, chicanery in another, there 
were a number of claimants in each, claimants who by 



48 The Eardy Plantagenets, a.d. 1158. 

prescriptive right might have lost all chance of recover- 
ing their lands, but whose very existence gave trouble. 
In Anjou, for instance, Henry had to contend against 
his own brother Geoffrey, to whom their father had 
left certain cities, and who might have a claim to the 
whole county. In Normandy the heirs of Stephen 
claimed the county of Mortain ; in Maine, Saintonge, 
and other Southern provinces, there were the remnants 
of older dynasties, always ready to give trouble. 

But further than this, the feudal law, as it was then 
recognised in France, gave the king, in his manifold 
His relation Capacities as king, duke, and count, certain 
to the King rights and certain obligations that are puzzling 
now, and must have been actually bewilder- 
ing then. Henry as Duke of Normandy inherited the 
relation, entered into by his ancestor Duke Richard 
the Fearless, of vassal to the Duke of the Franks; 
but the Duke of the Franks had now become King of 
France. It was a serious question how the duties of 
vassalage were to be defined. As Duke of Normandy 
also he had a right to the feudal superiority of Brit- 
tany. Yet it was no easy thing to say how Brittany could 
be made to act in case of a quarrel between king and 
duke. The tie which bound him as Count of Anjou 
was different from that which bound him as Duke of 
Normandy to the same King of France. As Count of 
Poictiers he was feudally bound to the Duke of Aqui- 
taine, but he was himself duke of Aquitaine, unless he 
chose to regard his wife as duchess and himself as 
count, in which case he would be liable to do feudal 
service to his wife only, and she would be responsible 
for the service to the King of France ; a very curious 
relation for a lady who had been married to both. We 
do not, however, find that this contrivance was employed 
by Henry himself, although it was used by John. And 



A.D. 1 158. Early Years of Henry II. 49 

this same point of difficulty arose everywhere. The 
feudal rights of Aquitaine — the right, that is, to demand 
homage and service — extended far beyond the limits of 
the sovereign authority of the dukes, and it was always 
an object to turn a claim of overlordship into an actual 
exercise of sovereign authority. The tie between the 
great county of Toulouse and the duchy of Aquitaine 
was complicated both by legal difficulty and by ques- 
tions of descent. The rights over Auvergne, claimed 
by both the king and the duke, were so complex as to 
be the matter of continual arbitration, and at last were 
left to settle themselves. 

And to these must be added, in the third place, local 
and personal questions; local, such as arose Questions of 
from uncertain boundaries, the line which se- boundary. 
parated Normandy from France, the Norman from the 
French Vexin, being perhaps the chief ; personal, arising 
from the enmity between Eleanor and her first personal 
husband, from the attitude of the house of questions. 
Champagne, from which Lewis VII. had selected his 
third wife, and which had the wrongs of Stephen to 
avenge. The Count of Flanders also was a pertinacious 
enemy of Henry. 

Under these circumstances it is not difficult to see 
that Henry's policy, however ambitious he might be, was 
peace ; at all events, peace long enough to Henry's 
consolidate his dominions and crush antago- true policy, 
nism in detail. And this must account for the fact that, 
with the exception of the war of Toulouse, in which 
Lewis VII. took part, not as a principal but as an ally of 
the count, there was no overt war between Eleanor's two 
husbands until it was produced by an entirely new 
quarrel. It could not be expected that there should be 
any love or friendship, but there was peace. Henry's 
policy was peace; Lewis was averse to war, having 

M. H. E 



50 The Early Plantagencts. a.d. 1159. 

neither skill nor resources. All Henry's French cam- 
paigns, then, during this period were occasioned by the 
His French circumstances which have been thus stated, 
w^rs. The object of the war of 1 1 56 was, sad to say, 

the subjugation of Geoffrey of Nantes, the king's own 
brother, who submitted to him, after he had taken his 
castles one by one, in the July of that year, and who 
died two years after. The business of 11 58 was to secure 
the territories that Geoffrey had left without heirs, and, 
that done, to prepare for the enforcement of Eleanor's 
claims on Toulouse. 

The war of Toulouse, with its preparations and re- 
sults, occupied the greater part of 1159, although the 
War of campaign itself was short. Henry had assem- 

Toulouse, bled his full court of vassals. William of 
^^59- Warenne, the son of Stephen, and Malcolm, 

King of Scots, followed him as his liegemen rather than 
as allies. Becket, as his Chancellor, came with an equip- 
ment not inferior to that of any of his earls and counts. 
Altogether it was a very splendid and expensive affair. 
The king marched to Toulouse; but at Toulouse was 
his enemy, his friend, his lord, his wife's first husband. 
Henry could not proceed to extremes against the man 
whom in his youthful sincerity he still recognised as 
his feudal lord, and whose personal humiliation would 
have degraded the idea of royalty, of which he was 
himself so proud. So he left Becket to continue the 
siege and returned westward. The French were at- 
tempting a diversion on the Norman frontier. Tou- 
louse, therefore, was not taken. Towards the end of 
the year a truce was made with Lewis, and early in 
1 160 the truce was turned into an alliance. But the 
aUiance brought with it the seeds of new and more fatal 
divisions. 

We have noted the way in which Henry used his 



A.D. 1 1 60. Early Years of Henry II. 51 

children as his tools or as the counters of his game. He 
began with them very young. His eldest ^i^^r \ 
child, William, to whom we have seen hpmage sons and 
done immediately after the coronation, died ^^^ 
very soon after, and Henry, who was born in February 
1 1 55, and had received conditional homage when he was 
two months old, now became the heir-apparent. The 
next child was a daughter, Matilda, born in 1156; in 
1 157 Richard was born, at either Oxford or Woodstock; 
Geoffrey, the next brother, came in 1158; then Eleanor, 
in 1 162; Johanna, in 1165; and last of all John, in 1167, 
On Henry's attempts to provide for these children hangs 
nearly all the interest of his foreign wars ; and the mar- 
riages of the daughters form a key to the history of the 
foreign policy of England and her alliances for many ages. 
The game may be considered to begin with Richard, 
who at the age of a year was betrothed to the daughter 
of Raymond of Barcelona and Queen ^Petro- jjj^ projects 
nilla of Aragon. This was done, it appears, of marriage 
to bind the count and queen either to help or 
to stand neutral in the war of Toulouse. The betrothal 
came to nothing. Henry, the elder brother, was the 
next victim. The peace of 1160 assigned him, at the 
age of five, as husband to the little lady Margaret of 
France, Lewis's daughter by his second wife, Constance 
of Castille. This marriage was not only to seal the 
peace but to secure to Henry a good frontier between 
Normandy and France. The castles of Gisors and 
Neafle, and the county of the Vexin, which lay between 
Normandy and Paris, were to be Margaret's portion, 
not to be surrendered until the marriage could be for- 
mally celebrated, and until then to remain in the custody 
of the Templars. Henry, however, did not stick at 
trifles. The little Margaret had been put into his hands 
to learn English or Norman ways. He had the marriage 



52 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. ii6i. 

celebrated between the tAvo children, and then prevailed 
,, • r on the Templars to surrender the castles. 

JVl arnage ot ^ 

Henry and Lcwis ncver forgavc that, and the Vexin quar- 
argare . ^^ remained an open sore during the rest of 
the reign ; for after the death of the younger Henry his 
rights were transferred to Richard by another unhappy 
marriage contract with another of Lewis's daughters. 
Practically the question was settled by the betrayal of 
Gisors to Philip, by Gilbert of Vacoeuil, whilst Richard 
was in Palestine ; but the struggle continued until John 
finally lost not only the Vexin but Normandy itself and 
all else that he had to lose. For the present, however, 
the outbreak of war, to which Henry's sharp practice led, 
was only a brief one. Henry was successful, and peace 
was concluded in August 1161. The year 1162 he spent 
in Normandy, holding councils and organising the ad- 
ministration of the duchy, as he had done that of the 
kingdom in his fir^t year. 

During the whole of this long absence from England 
the country was governed by Richard de Lucy and Earl 
England Robert of Leicester, as the king's chief jus- 
kinl^s^ ^^^ tices or justiciars ; the little Henry taking his 
absence. father's place on occasions of ceremony, when 

he happened to be in England. The historians of these 
years tell us little or nothing of what was going on. 
There were no wars or revolts ; abbots and bishops died 
and their successors were appointed ; notably the good 
Archbishop Theobald, to whom Henry owed so much, 
died in 1161, and Becket succeeded him. 

From other sources we learn that Henry's legal re- 
forms were in full operation. He had restored the ma- 
Progress of chiucry of the Exchequer, and with it the 
reforms. method of raising revenue which had been 

arranged in his grandfather's time. That revenue arose, 
firstly, from the ferm or rent of the counties ; that is, 



A.D. 1 162. Early Years of Henry II. 53 

the sum paid by the sheriffs as royal stewards, by way of 
composition for the rents of royal lands in Mature of 
the shire, and the ordinary proceeds of the the revenue, 
fines and other payments made in the ancient shire- 
moot or county court ; secondly, from the Danegeld, a 
tax of two shillings on the hide of land, originally 
levied as tribute to the Danes under Ethelred, but 
continued, like the Income Tax, as a convenient or- 
dinary resource ; thirdly, from the feudal revenue, arising 
from the profits of marriages, wardships, transfers of 
land, successions, and the like, and from the aids de- 
manded by the king from the several barons or com- 
munities that owed him feudal support. To these we 
may add a fourth source, the proceeds of courts of jus- 
tice, held by the king's officers to determine causes for 
which the ancient popular courts were not thought com- 
petent; such as began with suits between the king's 
immediate dependents, and by degrees extended to all 
the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the country. Judi- 
cature and finance were thus bound very closely to- 
gether; the sheriffs were not only tax-gatherers but 
executors of the law, and every improvement in the law 
was made to increase the income of the Ex- Administra 
chequer. To this we must attribute the means tion of 
taken by Henry to administer justice in the ^'^^^^^^- 
counties, sending some of the chief members of his judi- 
cial staff, year after year, through the country, forcing 
their way into the estates and castles of the most despotic 
nobles, and spreading the feeling of security together 
with the sense of loyalty, and the conviction that ready 
justice was well worth the money that it seemed to cost. 
Besides the revival of the provincial judicature in this 
shape Henry, from the beginning of the reign, added form 
and organisation to the proceedings of his supreme court 
of justice, which comes into prominence later on. 



54 The Early Plaiitagenets. ch. hi. 

Next to these his most important measure was the 
institution or expansion of what is called Scutage. Ac- 
cording to the ancient English law every 
freeman was bound to serve in arms for the 
defence of his country. That principle Henry only 
meddled with so far as to direct and improve it. But, 
according to the feudal custom, quite irrespective of this, 
every man who held land to the amount of twenty pounds' 
worth of annual value was obliged to perform or furnish 
the military service of a knight to his immediate lord. 
This kept the barons always at the head of bodies of 
trained knights, who might be regarded as ultimately a 
part of the king's army, but in case of a rebellion would 
probably fight for their immediate lord. /Henry, by al- 
lowing his vassals to commute their military service for 
a money payment, went a long way to disarm this very ' 
untrustworthy body; and with the money so raised he 
hired stipendiaries, with whom he fought his Continental 
wars. He began to act on this principle in the first year 
of his reign, when he made the bishops, notwithstanding 
strong objections from Archbishop Theobald, pay scu- 
tage for their lands held by knight-service. But in 1 1 59 
he extended the plan very widely, and took money in- 
stead of service from the whole of his dominions, com- 
pelling his chief lords to serve in person, but hiring, with 
the scutages of the inferior tenants, a splendid army of 
mercenaries, with which he fought the war of Toulouse. 

By thus disarming the feudal potentates, and forcing 
his judges into their courts, he completed the process by 
which he intended to humiliate them. Feudalism in Eng- 
land, after the reign of Henry II., never reared its head 
so high as to be again formidable. 

Other results incidentally followed from the special 
measures by which this great end was secured ; the more 
thorough amalgamation of the still unfused nationalities 



CH. Ill, Early Years of Henry II. 55 

of Norman and Englishman followed from a state of 
things in which both were equal before the increase of 
law, and the distinctions or privileges of national 
blood were no longer recognised among free 
men. The diminution of military power in the hands 
of the territorial lords left the maintenance of peace 
and the defence- of the country to be undertaken, as it 
had been of old, by the community of free English- 
men, locally trained, and armed according to their sub- 
stance. This created or revived a strong warlike spirit 
for all national objects, without inspiring the passion for 
military exploit or glory, which is the bane of what is 
called a military nation. On the national character, 
thus in a state of formation, the idea that law is and 
ought to be supreme was now firmly impressed; and 
although the further development of the governmental 
system furnished employment for Henry's later years, 
and was never neglected, even in the busiest and un- 
happiest period of his reign, it may be fairly said that 
the foundation was laid in the comparative peace and 
industry of these early years. At the age of thirty 
Henry had been nearly nine years a king, and had 
already done a work for which England can never cease 
to be grateful. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HENRY II. AND THOMAS BECKET. 

The English Church — Schools of Clergy — Rise of Becket — Quarrel 
with the King — Exile — Death. 

The history of the Church of England is during many 
ages the chief part of the history of the nation ; through- 
out it is a very large part of the history of The English 
the people. Their ways of thinking, their Church, 
system of morals, their intellectual growth, their inter- 



56 The Early Plantagenets. ch. iv. 

course with the world outside, cannot be understood but 
by an examination of the vicissitudes of their rehgious 
history; and it plays a scarcely less important part in the 
development of their political institutions. Christianity 
in England, looked at by the eye of history, means not 
only the knowledge of God and His salvation by Christ 
Jesus ; it carries with it, besides, all that is implied in 
civilisation, national growth and national unity. 

When the English, under the seven or eight strug- 
gling and quarrelling dynasties whose battles form for 
Under the centurics all the recorded life of the island, 
Heptarchy, were scven or eight distinct nationalities, — 
some of them tribally connected, some of them using allied 
systems of law, but otherwise having scarcely anything in 
common beyond dialects of a common growing lan- 
guage, — altogether without any common organisation or 
the desire of forming one, — the conversion in the seventh 
century taught them to regard themselves as one people. 
They were formed by St. Gregory and Archbishop Theo- 
dore into an organised Christian Church, the several 
dioceses of which represented the several kingdoms or 
provinces of their divided state. 

Thus arranged in one or, later on, in two ecclesias- 
tical provinces, the wise men of the several tribes 
National learned to act in concert; the tribes them- 
unity first sclvcs. Casting aside their tribal superstitions 

reaUsed. - i • r i i <- i 

for a common worship, found how tew real 
obstacles there were to prevent them from acting as one 
people; and from the date of the conversion the ten- 
dency of the kingdoms was to unite rather than to break 
up. Although this process was slow — for it went on for 
four centuries, and was scarcely completed when the 
Norman Conquest forced the mass of varied national 
elements into cohesion — it was a uniform tendency, con- 
trasted with and counteracting numerous and varying 



CH. IV. Henry IL and TJiomas Becket. 57 

tendencies towards separation. The Church built up the 
unity of the State, and in so doing it built up the unity 
of the nation. 

And one result of this was to make the Church ex- 
tremely powerful in the state. There was but one arch- 
bishop of Canterbury when there were seven Greatpower 
kings ; that archbishop's word was listened of the 
to with respect and obeyed in all the seven *' ' 
kingdoms, in any one of which the command of a 
strange king would have been received with contempt. 
The archbishop was exceedingly powerful, both in Kent, 
his peculiar diocese, and by his alliances with the states 
and churches of the Continent ; and the diocesan bishops 
were each, in his own district, a match for their kings, 
because they knew that in any struggle they could de- 
pend on the friendship of all their fellows outside their 
special kingdom, much more than the peccant king could 
depend on the assistance of his fellow-kings. They could 
meet in one council, whilst the several kings could only 
collect their own Witenagemots ; they were, in fact, the 
rulers of the Church of England, whilst the kings were 
only kings of Kent, Mercia, and Wessex. And when the 
kingdoms became one under the descendants of Egbert 
the prelates retained the same power. 

Never, perhaps, in any country were Church and State 
more closely united than they were in Anglo-Saxon times 
in England; for they were united, with careful .„- r 

° ' ... Alliance of 

recognition of their distinct functions, not, as Church and 

' State 

in Spain and some other lands, confounding 
.what should have been kept distinct, or making the pre- 
lates great temporal lords, or the national deliberations 
mere ecclesiastical councils. The prelates, the bishops 
and abbots, formed, as wise men, qualified by their 
spiritual office to be counsellors, a very large proportion of 
the Witenagemot, the ruling council of the kingdom; in 



58 The Early Plantagenets. ch. iv. 

every county the bishop sat in the courts with the sheriff, 
to declare the Divine law, as the sheriff did the secular 
law. The clergy were, for all moral offences, under the 
same rules as the laity, save that it was the bishop who 
in the common court attended to their case and saw 
substantial justice enforced. So matters went on until 
the Conquest, the changes which took place in the mean- 
time affecting the spiritual discipline and character rather 
than the constitutional position of the clergy; making 
them, that is, more or less secular in their views and 
aims, but not lessening their power. Nay, every change 
strengthened rather than weakened their position. Dun- 
stan was the prime minister of the last mighty king ; but 
under Canute the prelates were even more powerful than 
under Edgar ; and we can understand from the history 
of the Conquest that it was not the fault of the English- 
born bishops that William the Norman obtained the vic- 
tory in the council as well as in the field. 

The Conquest had some very marked effects in this 
region of life. In the first place, it was absolutely neces- 
Effects of sary for William to have the clergy on his 
SrSe'^'^"^^*^ side ; if he had not he would have nothing 
Church. to form a counterpoise for the power of the 

barons, which was already threatening, nor would he 
have been able to get hold of the people. He wanted 
to be a national king — the protector of the national 
Church, the king of the English people. In the hope 
of securing the support of the bishops he waited for three 
years before he took summary measures against those 
who were still secretly or overtly hostile. When patience 
was seen to be unavailing he deposed Archbishop Sti- 
gand, no doubt at the instigation of the Pope, but in his 
place he set, not a Norman, who would have alienated 
the people, but a wise Italian, under whose counsels the 
Norman king and the English people were drawn together 



CH. IV. Henry II. and Thomas Becket. 59 

almost as closely as the king and people had been before 
the Normans came. Two effects resulted directly from 
this. The Conquest of England coincides in point of 
time with the great period of the Hildebran- -pj^^ Hiide- 
dine ideas ; — the reign of Gregory VII. and of brandine 

..." . 1 • 1 revival. 

the popes appointed by his mfluence, m which 
a new interpretation was put on the relations of Church 
and State, and a jealous equilibrium established or at- 
tempted, the result of which in France and Germany 
seemed to be the tying of the State to the chariot-wheels 
of the Church. Of such a consummation there was in 
England no chance under William and Lanfranc, but 
nevertheless the coincidence in time was not without 
its consequences. England and her Church were drawn 
into the vortex of the Church politics of Europe, and the 
relations between Church and State in England were re- 
modelled upon the new type. The courts of the bishops 
for the trial of clerks were separated from the courts of 
the sheriffs ; the election of prelates was arranged by a 
sort of compromise between royal power and canonical 
form; the bishops became barons and held their lands, 
or a portion of them, by the new baronial tenure; and 
their councils were marked off by a much broader line 
than they had been from the councils of the Witan, or 
the courts of the king. Then, too, a new concordat was 
arranged to regulate the exercise of the papal power, 
for which, before the Conquest, the English had had a 
respectful but veiy distant regard. The king insisted 
that when there were rival popes he should church 
be the judge to determine which should be ac- policy o^ the 

■■ . V, •. ■■ • 1 1 ij Conqueror. 

cepted m England; no suit or appeal should 
be carried to Rome without his leave ; none of his servants 
should be excommunicated against his sovereign will ; no 
legate should land without his permission ; no ecclesias- 
tical legislation should be enforced without his approval. 



6o The Early Plantagenets. ch, iv. 

Within these limits the bishops had a great deal of 
new power ; and, as they succeeded in a great measure 
'ihe ^° the implicit faith and obedience which 

Norman the nation had given to their own Enghsh 

bishops. ° ^ 

bishops, they were able to exert a very strong 
influence towards keeping the nation together. They 
were kept by the king upon his side, as opposed to the 
barons, and securing them he secured the nation. This 
is clear even in the history of Anselm, who, although 
opposed to and persecuted by the king, never forgot his 
duty to the people so far as to take part with the barons 
against him. Besides the bishops, however, there was in 
the monasteries a great reserve fund of national feehng; 
and, up to the reign of Henry II., what little we can 
trace of English feeling is to be traced in the writings of 
the monks; they kept ahve an English sentiment as 
distinct from the new national idea that was to blend 
English and Norman, the king and the bishops more 
distinctly representing the latter. 

These things being so, we are able to understand 
what it was that gave the prelates the great moral weight 
In Stephen's they posscsscd in Stephen's reign, and to per- 
reign. ceive how vast was the importance of main- 

taining the alliance between them and the crown. We 
learn too how the many streams of influence which they 
guided reacted upon the clerical body itself, and pro- 
duced several distinct schools or classes of ecclesiastical 
character. In the first place, the kings had taken pre- 
Secular latcs to be their ministers, and had promoted 

school. their ministers to be prelates. Bishop Roger 

of Salisbury was not only a powerful ecclesiastic but 
the royal justiciar, the head of all the courts and the 
treasurer of all the money of the king. Under him 
was a set of clerks who would set the fashion for one 
school of the clergy, secular in mind and aim and 



CH. lY. Henry II. a7td Thomas Becket. 6i 

manners ; often married men, so far as their right to 
marry can be accounted vahd, canons of cathedrals, 
where they provided for their children and made estates 
for themselves ; worthy men most of them, the predeces- 
sors of the clerical magistrates of this day, far greater in 
quarter sessions and county meetings than in convocation 
or missionary work. That was one very strong school — a 
school that required tender handling both politically and 
ecclesiastically, and in the view of which we can under- 
stand how important it was for Bishop Roger to secure 
the consent of the Pope and the archbishops to his hold- 
ing secular office. For it is said that, worldly man as 
he was, he refused, as a matter of conscience as well as 
policy, to act as the king's minister without the distinct 
approval of the saintly Anselm and his successors, the 
archbishops as well as the popes. 

A second class was composed of the ecclesiastical 
politicians, men, that is, who were before all things 
Churchmen, of whom Henry of Winchester Ecciesiasti- 
is one of the best specimens. These did not, ^ai school. 
like the first, sink the clergyman in the statesman or the 
magistrate, and accept preferment as the mere reward of 
political service ; they were not the Sadducees but the 
Pharisees of the time ; they would not marry, nor sell 
livings, nor act against the Pope ; whatever secular power 
they could get they would use for the benefit of the 
Church. To say this is not to condemn them ; they saw 
in the service of the Church the clearest and readiest way 
of serving both God and man. These men were in tone 
and morals a higher set of men than the first. They were 
in close alhance with the see of Rome ; they knew far more 
than the others about the state of Christendom gene- 
rally; they were scholars, the founders of universities, the 
protectors of culture ; they prevented the Church from 
becoming thoroughly secular; and, if there was a higher 



62 The Early Plantagenets. ch. iv. 

type, it was a type also much more liable to be assumed 
by counterfeits. It is a great mistake to undervalue this 
school. It would seem probable that both Archbishop 
Theobald as well as his rival, Henry of Winchester, 
should be referred to it ; it was the party of the Legate, 
the party that tried to introduce the Civil law as a subject 
of study at Oxford ; that went abroad to attend councils, 
that bearded royal tyranny in Church and State. 

And there was a higher type — a type we will call it 
rather than a school, because the graces that compose it 
^^ are not learned in men's schools, but under 

Spiriiual the discipline of a Divine master: the pure 
religious type, which we find, with some alloy, 
in such men as Anselm ; the meek and quiet spirit that 
has a zeal for righteousness and a love of souls ; that 
will bear all things for itself, but rise up to avenge the 
cause of the helpless. It is the noblest type ; to which 
belong the true hero, the true martyr, the saint indeed ; 
but it is a type which to man's eye is the most easily 
counterfeited by the popular hero, the self-advertising 
saint, the professed candidate for mock martyrdom. 

Such, then, are the three types of character which 
perhaps mark all ages of the Church, but which come 
out most markedly and distinctly in the present period ; 
and the career of Thomas Becket, the hero of this part 
of our national history, cannot be understood without 
a clear idea of them. 

For Becket was a very extraordinary man. In what- 
ever he did he acted on Solomon's maxim and did it with 
P j g ^^ his might ; and, as he passed through each of 

Thomas the phascs of character that mark these three 

schools, his career may be divided accord- 
ingly. In the first phase he was a secular Churchman. 
He had been trained in the house of his father, a Lon- 
don merchant of Norman blood ; he had been schooled 



CH. IV. Henry II. and Thomas Beckct. 63 

in accounts by Master Octonummi ; he had learned 
accomphshments in the hall of Richer de I'Aigle ; and 
then had entered Archbishop Theobald's family as secre- 
tary. There, no doubt, he got his knowledge of civil 
and canon law, and learned the business of a diploma- 
tist. Although Theobald was an ecclesiastical politician 
of the second stamp, he did not as yet impress that 
character on Becket. John of Salisbury, who also was 
Theobald's secretary, took some.such impression from him, 
and shows it in a constant criticism of Becket from the 
point of view natural to the Churchman pure and simple. 
Still Becket learned that side of life during these experi- 
ences. With this training he was qualified not only to 
conduct the negotiations that secured the crown to Henry 
II., but, when he was made Chancellor, as he Becket as 
was at the king's accession, he was able to Chancellor. 
manage and extend the duties of his office, magnifying 
it as no other Chancellor had done before. The Chan- 
cellor was a sort of secretary of state for all depart- 
ments ; he was not so powerful in himself, or in his con- 
stitutional position, as the Justiciar, but he had nearly as 
much real power through his hold on the king, whose 
letters he wrote, whose accounts he kept, all whose formal 
business he recorded, and all whose irksome duties he 
took off his hands. We find Becket, then, in this rela- 
tion to Henry, who had no great love of public pomp, 
and was willing enough that the Chancellor should share 
the expense. Becket at this time appears to us as a very 
splendid officer, with a great retinue of knights and a 
great revenue from his churches ; an indefatigable letter- 
writer, an efficient judge, a cunning financier ; as yet not 
a great Churchman in politics, for the plan of taxing the 
bishops by scutage was set on foot by him, in opposition 
to the archbishop, his old patron. 

Henry might well think himself fortunate in securing 



64 The Early Plantagenets, ch. iv. 

such a minister; he threw himself with entire confidence 
ijenry's upon him, and there can be Httle doubt that 

confidence Beckct is to a great degree answerable for 
the grievous change in Henry's character that 
followed their quarrel. To anticipate, however : when 
/Henry made his Chancellor Archbishop of Canterbury 
he contemplated securing, at the head of the Church, a 
friend who would sympathise with his statesmanlike 
designs, who was sure to be able to sway the clergy, and 
who would repay his unbounded conjfidence with grateful 
and straightforward service. But he was sadly disap- 
pointed. Becket was not the man to exchange his 
splendid position as Chancellor for the life of an ordi- 
nary commonplace archbishop. If he undertook the 
office he would act up to the highest idea of its require- 
ments.. Never was there a more sudden transformation. 

Becket ' ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^' ^^^ Roger of Salisbury, hear- 

becomes ing causcs and framing his budget, counting 

out his money, or reviewing his knights ; the 
next he is Lanfranc in miniature, or not so much Lan- 
franc as Anselm, or Henry of Winchester rather than 
Anselm; — the high ecclesiastic pure and simple, coveting 
the Papal legation, hand-and-glove with the Pope, full of 
ideas based on the canon law, which his friend Gratian 
had just codified in the Decretum ; an unflinching and 
unreasoning supporter of all clerical claims, right or 
wrong, wholesome or unwholesome, consistent or incon- 
sistent with his previous life and opinions. 

A third phase awaits him. In his new character he is 
pretty sure to quarrel with the king ; he does so, and, 
Becket in however just his cause, he does it in a way 
his later that does not prejudice us in his favour ; (his l/ 

^ ^^^' object is studiously to put Henry in the 

wrong ; his conduct in the last degree exasperating. 
The second form of clerical life has served its time. 



A.D. 1 162. Henry II. and Thomas Becket, 65 

Now he comes out as a candidate for martyrdom. In 
this also he will do what he has to do with all his might. 
Unmindful of the early friendship of the king, from 
whom certainly he had never met with anything but 
kindness and the most familiar courtesy, he declares that 
he is in danger of his life; he insists on celebrating mass 
at the altar of the protomartyr and on appearing at court 
carrying his own cross, partly as a safeguard against 
violence which he has no reason to apprehend, partly in 
an awful miserable parody of the great day of Calvary. 
All the rest of his career is the same — a morbid craving 
after the honours of martyrdom, or confessorship at the 
least, a crafty policy for embroiling Henry with his many 
enemies, combined with a plausible allegation that it is 
all for his good and that of the Church. There is in him 
some greatness of character still, some sincerity, we will 
hope, but no self-renunciation, no self-restraint, no earnest 
striving for peace ; little, very little, care of the flock over 
which he was overseer, and which was left shepherdless. 

On a calm review of his life it seems that Becket was 
most at home in his first position; that in the second he 
was ill at ease and awkward, divided between two aims 
and failing in conduct as well as in cause. The third 
phase becomes him least of all ; and it is only by con- 
sidering the horrible sufferings of his death that we 
pardon him for the conduct that brought the pains of 
death upon him. 

Briefly to recapitulate the stages of the career of this 
man, to whom even his enemies allow the title of great- 
ness: Becket was Chancellor from the accession of Henry, 
in 1 154, to his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury, 
in June 1162. The king was still in France when Theo- 
bald died. It was regarded as a somewhat unprecedented 
measure to make so secular a person as Thomas arch- 
bishop, but Henry's influence and his own were supreme ; 

M. H. F 



66 The Early Plantagenets, a.d. 1163. 

he had accepted the dignity with misgiving, but having 
He becomes accepted he did not hesitate about the mea- 
archbishop. sures to be taken for securing it ; the consent 
of the bishops and monks was readily yielded, and one 
who was, so far as his place of birth could make him, an 
Englishman, sat once more on the throne of Augustine. 
All difficulties were smoothed for him; he had not to go 
to Rome for his pall; it arrived a few weeks after his 
consecration ; and he had six months' quiet and peace 
in his new dignity before the king came home. 

This was on the 25th of January, 1163. Henry found, 
as was to be expected, that considerable arrears of busi- 
Henry ncss had accrucd during his long absence. 

France ^"^""^ He was meditating a new expedition to Wales 
1 163. in order to enforce the homage due to him 

and his heir-apparent from the Welsh princes. The trial 
of Henry of Essex, who had been accused of treason 
and cowardice by Robert de Montfort, for letting fall the 
standard at the battle of Consilt, and who was to defend 
himself by battle, was also imminent ; and already some 
apprehensions were felt as to the conduct of the arch- 
Becket bishop. He had resigned, much in opposition 

resigns the to Henry's wishes, his office of Chancellor on 
ancery. j^.^ appointment as Archbishop, and had pro- 
cured from the justiciar a full acquittance for all sums 
which he had received for the king during his tenure of 
office, especially the sums arising from the revenue of 
vacant churches, a source of royal income which was 
specially administered by the Chancellor. But he had 
not resigned the great manors of Eye and Berkhampstead, 
which were usually held as part of the endowment of the 
Chancellor ; these it is possible he intended to hold only 
until his successor was appointed, but no successor was 
appointed, and the strange spectacle was seen of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury holding two of the finest pieces 



A.D. 1 163. Henry II. and Thomas Becket. Gy 

of the secular patronage of the crown without any official 
claim to them. 

In another point he also showed himself somewhat 
grasping, or at all events made enemies at a moment when 
his experience should have taught him to be He enforces 
more politic. Many of the old possessions of JgHtl^o^f^his 
his see had come into the hands of laymen, see. 
who were negligent in performing their services,, and 
probably wished to throw off the yoke of the archbishop 
altogether. In order to enforce his rights he acted in a 
way which, justifiable as it was, was nevertheless impru- 
dent; the result was a royal inquest as to the archiepisco- 
pal fiefs ; and, as the archbishop was already becoming 
unpopular, the verdict of the jury robbed him of some 
rights that might otherwise have been successfully main- 
tained. In all this, however, he had no coolness with 
the king. Henry felt the resignation of the Chancellor- 
ship as a personal wrong ; for although in the empire, 
where the king looked for precedents, the office of Arch- 
chancellor was held by the three great metropolitans of 
Germany, Becket had followed the usage almost un- 
broken in England in resigning; but there was nothing 
like an open quarrel. The spring of the year passed 
without one. In March the fate of Henry of Essex was 
decided ; he was defeated in the battle trial, and the king, 
greatly against his will it was said — for he believed that 
the fall of the standard at Consilt was accidental — was 
obliged by the Norman law to declare his estates for- 
feited. Henry of Essex retired into a monastery, and so 
Henry lost one of his best friends. 

Immediately after the king went on his second Welsh 
war, a sort of military demonstration marked Second 
by no great victory or defeat, and on the i st of Welsh war, 
July called a great court at Woodstock to wit- 
ness the homage of the princes. The King of Scots 



6S The Early Plantageitets. a. d. 1163. 

made his appearance at this council, and took the oath 
Council at of fcaltv to the httle heir to the crown, Henry, 
Woodstock. ^jjQ -^a^s jjQ^ eight years old. This was the 
first opportunity that the archbishop had of declaring 
his new attitude. He had been to visit the Pope, 
Alexander HI., at Tours. The Pope was in exile from 
his see ; the Emperor Frederick had refused to ac- 
knowledge him, and had set up an anti-Pope. Henry 
and Lewis, the former probably acting by Becket's ad- 
vice, had in 1161 recognised Alexander as the Catholic 
Pope, and Tours, where he was holding the council at 
which Becket attended, was within the dominions of 
Henry. We can only suppose that the sight of the 
Pope kindled Becket's zeal, not so much against his 
own lord who was the Pope's friend, as against the 
secular power in general, of which he had been hitherto 
a devoted servant. Anyhow he came back from Tours 
prepared, on the first question, ecclesiastical or civil, 
which might arise, to take the lead of what might be 
called the constitutional opposition ; an idea which is, for 
the first time since the Norman Conquest, realised in the 
course he now adopted. 

As we should expect from our knowledge of later 
crises of the kind, the bone of contention was found in 
Becket ^^ financial budget of the year. Henry was, 

opposes the as usual, busy with his reforms ; and, although 
fin^dar .he was an honest reformer and had a true 
point, genius for organisation, he liked best those 

methods of reform that helped to fill the treasury. The 
administration of the sheriffs was during the latter part 
of the reign a frequent subject of legislative ordinance, 
and the question which now arose was connected with 
it. The sheriffs had been used to collect from every 
hide of land in their counties two shillings annually. It 
was probable that out of this a fixed sum was paid to the 



A,D. 1 1 63. Henry II. and Thomas Becket. 69 

king under the name of Danegeld ; certainly the Dane- 
geld was collected at that rate; and as the sums paid 
into the Exchequer under that name were very small 
compared with the extent of land that paid the tax, it is 
probable that the sheriffs paid a fixed composition, and 
retained the surplus as wages for their services in the 
execution of judicial work and police. Our authorities 
merely tell us that the king proposed to take away this 
money from the sheriffs and bring it into the general ac- 
count of his revenue. Thomas opposed this; declared 
that the tax should not go into the king's coffers, that 
the sheriffs should not lose, that the lands of his Church 
should pay the tax no more ; and he seems to have 
prevailed, although we have no positive record to that 
effect. 

Two most important points stand out here. This is 
the first case of any express opposition being made to 
the king's financial dealings since the Con- Constitu- 
quest. Until now, whenever money was importance 
wanted, the royal necessities were laid before of this act. 
the national council, the assembly of bishops, earls, and 
great vassals, and others, and the method was explained 
by which they were to be satisfied. If he wanted to marry 
his daughter, or to knight his son, or to tax his towns, he 
said how much he wanted, and it was paid. Here, how- 
ever, we find the archbishop objecting to the royal deal- 
ings with the Danegeld, and thus asserting the right of 
the national council to refuse as well as to bestow money. 
A second point is, that although ever since the reign of 
Ethelred, with the exception of a few years of Abolition of 
Edward the Confessor — who had, as the legend Danegeld. 
ran, seen the devil sitting on the money-bags, and had, 
therefore, abolished the tax — and certainly ever since the 
days of the Conqueror, this odious impost had been levied, 
from this time it ceases to appear by this name in the 



70 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1163. 

rolls of the revenue. Henr}^ II. devised other ways of 
getting money, but the Danegeld appears no more ; and 
thus the first fruit of the first constitutional opposition is 
the abolition of the most ancient property-tax, imposed 
as a bribe for the Danes. We may well imagine how 
angry Henry would be at this interference, coming from 
the man who had hitherto been his right hand in ail his 
reforms. 

The courtiers saw it, and they began to raise little 
suits against Becket on little matters by which they 
Becket' Hiight harass him, and, like true courtiers, 

new accelerate the fall of a falling man. Such in 

particular were John the Marshal, who raised 
a claim touching one of the archiepiscopal manors, and 
William of Eynesford, who claimed the patronage of one 
of the archbishop's livings, and was rashly excommuni- 
cated by Becket, contrary to the custom which forbade 
Council at ^^ cxcommunication of a tenant-in-chief of 
Westmin- the king without the king's licence. Three 
months, however, passed away; and on the 
ist of October the king called a great council at West- 
minster. 

In the process of his reforms he was startled by the 
absolute immunity accorded to the crimes of the clergy, 
or persons pretending to be clergymen, through the 
double jurisdiction of the lay and Church courts which 
was introduced by William the Conqueror. Any clerk 
who committed a crime could be demanded by his 
bishop from the officers of secular justice, and sen- 
tenced by him to ecclesiastical punishment, which, ac- 
cording to the law of William, was to be enforced by 
the secular arm. But, in fact, so much afraid were the 
bishops of any clerk being tried by the lay courts, and 
so jealous were the lay officers of being called on to 
enforce the ecclesiastical punishments, that the whole 



4.D. 1 163. Hen7y II. and Thomas Becket. yi 

system broke down. Thieves and murderers who called 
themselves clerks were demanded by the bishops and 
sentenced to penances and deprivation of orders, two 
punishments at which they could afford to laugh. Henry 
proposed that, when such prisoners were taken and found 
guilty, they should be delivered to the bishops to be spi- 
ritually punished, and then to the secular officers, to have 
sufficient punishment, to be hanged or blinded or impri- 
soned as the mild laws of the period ordered. Thomas 
would not hear of this — one punishment was Becket 
enough for one fault ; if the clergyman was a clerical ^^^ 
thief, and proved so to be, let him be degraded immunities. 
— that was enough ; if he broke the law again, the law 
might have him, for he was after degradation entitled 
to the privileges of a clergyman no more. Henry grew 
very angry at this foolish and imprudent pioposal. Such, 
he said, had not been the law in the time of his grand- 
father, the great king Henry the Elder, the lion of 
righteousness. Hewouldnot submit, but would Henry 
enforce the ancient rights and customs of the appeals to 

° the ancient 

realm as his grandfather had done. But what, customs, 
it was asked, were those customs ? The reign of Stephen 
had witnessed a total abeyance of secular law, and had 
listened to very extraordinary assertions of ecclesiastical 
right and liberty. Let the ancient customs be first ascer» 
tained, and then it would be time to say whether or no 
the clergy and laity could act together. Becket allowed 
the bishops to promise to observe these customs ' saving 
their order.' Henry declared that that meant nothing. 
The assembly was broken up in wrath. The king or- 
dered the manors of Eye and Berkhampstead to be 
surrendered, and the archbishop in two or three later 
interviews sought in vain for a reconciliation. 

Whether in this Henry acted from passionate indig- 
nation, or because he saw that Becket had taken on him= 



72 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1164. 

self the maintenance of the extreme views propounded by 
Henry's the canonists as to the immunity of spiritual 

motives. men, we cannot now venture to determine. 

The breach between the two was never healed ; both 
probably saw that it never could even be compromised. 
The dispute had its real basis in the difficulty of ad- 
justing legal and spiritual relations, which even at the 
present day seems no nearer receiving a permanent set- 
tlement. 

Soon after Christmas another court was held, at 
Clarendon, one of those forest palaces at which, as at 
Council of Woodstock, Henry and his sons used to call 
Clarendon, the counscllors together, and diversify busi- 
^^ ^' ness with sport. It was called for the purpose 

of finishing the business begun at Westminster. The 
archbishop was asked whether he would accept the 
ancient customs ; he declined to do it without making 
conditions. The king then ordered that the ' recognition 
of the customs ' should be read. This was the report of 
the great committee appointed to ascertain and commit 
them to writing, a committee which nominally contained 
nearly all the bishops and barons, but which Becket de- 
clared to consist only of Richard de Lucy, the justiciar, and 
Jocelin de Bailleul, a French lawyer. This report was the 
^ .V celebrated Constitutions of Clarendon, a sort of 

ConsUtu- _ _ ' 

tions of code or concordat, in sixteen chapters, which 

included not merely a system of definite rules 
to regulate the disposal of the criminal clergy, but a 
method of proceeding by which all quarrels that arose 
between the clergy and laity might be satisfactorily 
heard and determined. Questions of advowsons, of dis- 
puted estates, of excommunication, the rights of the 
spiritual courts over laymen, and of lay courts over 
spiritual men, the rights of the crown in vacant churches 
and in the nomination to benefices^, and the right of appeal 



A.D. 1 1 64. Henry II. and Thoinas Becket. 73 

in ecclesiastical causes, were all defined. No one was to 
carry a suit farther than the archiepiscopal court ; that 
is, no one was to appeal to the Pope without the king's 
leave. Prelates and parsons were not to quit the king- 
dom without hcence. The sons of rustics or villeins were 
not to be ordained without leave of the lords on whose 
lands they were born. Many similar customs were re- 
corded, which show that Henry had determined to set 
the jurisprudence of the kingdom, as touching laymen 
and clergy alike, on a just and equal basis ; no unfairness 
towards the spiritual estate was intended, but simply 
the extinction or restriction of the immunities, the exist- 
ence of which threw the whole system into disorder. 
An appeal to Rome must not be allowed to paralyse the 
whole ecclesiastical jurisdiction, any more than an asser- 
tion that the murderer or the murdered man — for the im- 
munity told both ways — was a clerk, should be allowed to 
ensure the escape and impunity of the murderer. Becket 
was perhaps, at the first sight of these Con- Becket's 
stitutions, inclined or, as he would have said, conduct, 
tempted to yield. He accepted the Constitutions. Al- 
most as soon as he had done so he drew back ; either 
he recalled his concession or refused to set his seal to 
the acceptance, or in some way recanted. We have no 
entirely trustworthy evidence ; but it would seem he de- 
clared that he had sinned, that he would go to Rome, 
that he would resign his see, that he would not act as 
archbishop without first receiving special absolution. 

All this had no other effect than to exasperate Henry 
the more, and to encourage the rapidly increasing crowd 
of Becket's enemies. Unfortunately we have p^^^^ jj n 
no details for the next six months, save that Northamp- 
the archbishop once or twice saw the king °"' " ''' 
in vain. In October 1164, at Northampton, the cloud 
finally broke. Becket's enemies saw their way to crush 



74 The Eai'ly Plantagenets. a.d. 1164- 

him altogether, and Henry yielded to them. The council 
was formally summoned; all the persons who held of 
the king directly — that is, who were subject to no lord 
coming between them and the king — were duly invited ; 
the greater barons probably, as had been usual under 
Henry I., and, as the Great Charter afterwards enjoined, 
by special letters ; the minor ones by a general summons 
made known through the sheriff in each shire. It was 
to the archbishop that the first letter of summons ought 
Summons by ancient rule to have been directed. Instead 
of Becket. Qf ^^^ \^q. received a writ through the Sheriff 
of Kent ordering him to present himself at Northampton 
to answer the complaint of John the Marshal. 

However informal this was, Becket complied, rather 
than by absenting himself from the court to leave his 
cause in hands which he could not trust. He 
attended, and was overwhelmed. First he was 
sentenced to pay 500 marks to John the Marshal, who was 
declared to have proved his claim against him. Then he 
was called on to present the accounts of the Chancery, of 
which he had been acquitted by a general discharge when 
he became archbishop. He now put on the aspect of a 
martyr, and declared himself ready to die for the rights of 
his Church. Henry and his agents declared that it was the 
person, not the prelate, who was aimed at ; that they were 
not assailing the rights of the Church but vindicating the 
laws of the land. The bishops advised unconditional 
submission, which would, no doubt have been the wisest 
course, for it would have disarmed the king without 
conceding any matter of principle; for Henry was not 
the man to make an extreme use of victory, and might 
still perhaps have been induced to act with moderation. 
Instead of this, as Henry grew more peremptory Thomas 
grew more provoking ; at last he declared himself really 
in danger, turned and fled. 



-1 169. Heiiry II. mid Thomas Becket. 75 

He went off in disguise from Northampton, and, after 
several trying adventures, landed in Flanders, ^.^ g. ^^ 
whence he made his way to join the pope at 
Sens, and thence to Pontigny. 

It would be a tedious task to trace the minute cir- 
cumstances of Becket's hfe during the next six years; 
they are somewhat obscure, and the large number of 
undated letters of the period makes even the sequence 
of the main events puzzling. The upshot of the stor>^ 
is briefly this : — At Pontigny Becket remained until 
Henry threatened the whole Cistercian body ^^.^ ^^.^^ 
if they did not expel him ; in consequence of 
that he threw himself on the friendship of Lewis VII., who 
appointed as his resting-place the abbey of St. Colombe, 
at Sens. There he remained, making occasional journeys 
On his own business, until he returned to Canterbury in 
1 1 70. Whilst at Pontigny and Sens he acted up to his 
new character — wore a hair shirt, practised great mor- 
tifications, and behaved as if he believed himself to be 
undergoing a sort of modified martyrdom. All the time 
he was bringing all the influence which he had to bear 
upon Lewis VII., the Counts of Champagne and Flanders, 
and other potentates, to induce them to take up his 
cause, and either by urging the Pope to extreme mea- 
sures, or by direct negotiation with Henry, to procure 
his honourable recall. The Pope would have given 
anything for peace and quietness, but he could not 
afford to alienate Henry so long as he was on bad terms 
with the Emperor. He sent commissions and legations 
to Normandy, of which Henry disposed either by pro- 
mises or by plausible professions of his own goodwill, 
or by substantial presents of the strongest of all , the 
powers of silence, a handsome sum of gold. Had he 
rested here he might have been forgiven. But unfor- 
tunately for his own credit he determined to persecute 



'jS The Early Plaiitageiiets. a.d. 1165- 

the archbishop in the person of his relations, and by 
Henry's ^ crucl edict Sent many inoffensive famihes, 

cruel who wcre connected with Thomas, into exile. 

measures. ,-_, -r^ i ^ ■ ^ 

Ihen Becket answered with excommunica- 
tion, including in his ban all the king's closest coun- 
sellors, some of whom had very little to do with the 
proceedings against him. From time to time Becket 
saw the king, under the wing of Lewis VII. ; once at 
Montmirail, in January 11 69, once at Montmartre, in 
November of the same year. In each case either Henry 
was hypocritical or Becket offensive : we cannot decide. 
At length a new point of quarrel brought about a re- 
conciliation, and the reconciliation immediately resulted 
in Becket's death. 

Before ending the story we may briefly recapitulate 
the chief events of these years, outside the Becket strug- 
Henry's gle. In the year 1165, that succeeding the 

durin^*l^hf^ archbishop's flight from Northampton, Henry 
quarrel. paid a short visit to Normandy, and received 

a proposal from Frederick I. for a couple of marriages, 
a close league of alliance, and a joint action against the 
Pope, who was supposed to be abetting Becket. The 
only result of this was the marriage of Henry's eldest 
Alliance daughter, Matilda, with Henry the Lion, Duke 

with of Saxony and Bavaria, at this moment Fre- 

ermany. derick's most intimate friend and kinsman, 
later on his enemy and victim. Neither Henry nor 
England could be persuaded to accept the anti-Pope, 
but the temporising action of the king's agents in Ger- 
many gave Becket an opportunity of involving all alike 
in a charge of heresy and apostasy. 

After his return to England, later in the year, Henry 

Third made his third Welsh expedition, which had 

Welsh war, no morc permanent efliect than the former 

ones, as an attempt either to subdue the 

country or to secure the peace of the borders. It was 



-II70. Henry II. and Thomas Becket. Jj 

carried out with an amount of cruelty which shows Henry's 
character to have already deteriorated. After his return he 
held, early in 1166, another council at Claren- ^ggi^e of 
don, also marked by an important act of legis- Clarendon, 
lation, the Assize of Clarendon, by which the 
criminal law was reformed, and the grand jury system 
established or reformed in every shire. 

As soon as this was done he went to Normandy, in 
March 1166, and stayed away until March Long visit 
1 1 70. During this time little or nothing but to France. 
the ordinary business of justice and taxation is recorded 
in English authorities. The Becket quarrel was the all- 
engrossing subject, the sole question of public interest. 
Abroad the view is only diversified by negotiation and 
border warfare with Lewis VII., and by the carrying out 
of Henry's plan for securing possession of Brittany by 
the marriage of his third son, Geoffrey, with the heiress 
of the count. Having spent nearly four years in this 
way he returned, in order to look after business at 
home, and in particular to see his eldest son, who was 
fifteen, crowned as his associate and successor in the 
kingdom. The importance of the former acts comes 
into prominence in the later history of the reign. The 
coronation was the first of a series of events which sealed 
Becket's fate. It was solemnised on the 14th Coronation 
of June, at Westminster. The Archbishop of Hei?y,°''''^ 
York, Roger of Pont I'Eveque, an old rival of 1170. 
Thomas Becket, placed the crown on the boy's head, in 
contravention of the right of Canterbury, and in the 
absence of the little Queen Margaret. Lewis was ex- 
asperated by this act of neglect or disrespect shown to 
his daughter; Becket was maddened by the contempt 
shown for his authority. The storm began to rage ; 
Lewis went to war ; Thomas, and the counts whom he 
made his friends, besieged the Pope with prayers, and 
at last he sent or promised to send a definitive legation 



2 8 The Early Plaiitagenets. a.d. 1170. 

to place Henry's dominions under interdict, and compel 
him to recall the archbishop. 

Then Henry gave way. Crossing to Normandy a 
few days after the coronation, he met Becket at Freteval 
Reconcliia- in July, and there consented to the return of 
Hen°^ and ^^^ great enemy. Three months, however, in- 
Becket, tervened before Becket started for home, and 

during the time he had several meetings with the king, 
in which he behaved, or his behaviour was interpreted, 
in a way very prejudicial to his reputation for sincerity. 
Becket's At last he reached England, early in Decem- 
return. \,Qx, and as soon as he landed began to ex- 

communicate the bishops who had crowned the boy 
Henry. At London and at Canterbury he was received 
with delight. Henry had become unpopular : the arch- 
bishop's popularity had been increased by his absence, 
and the multitude does occasionally sympathise with a 
man who has been oppressed. The news of his rash, 
intemperate conduct reached Henry at court, at Bur, 
near Bayeux, where he had established himself after a 
very severe illness in the autumn. In high passion the 
king spoke works which he would have recalled at once, 
Henry's t)ut which laid on him a lifelong burden : 

rash words. ( Would all his servants stand by and see him 
thus defied by one whom he had himself raised from 
poverty to wealth and power ? Would no one rid him 
of the troublesome clerk ? ' 

Armed by no public grievance, moved by no loyal 
zeal, but simply private enemies who saw their way to 
Murder of rcvcnge and impunity, Reginald FitzUrse, 
Beckett, j^ygj^ jjg Morville, Richard Brito, and Wil- 

1T70. ' liam de Tracy, came to Canterbury, sought 

out the archbishop, and slew him. The cruelty on the 
one side, the heroism on the other — the savage barbarity 
of the desperate men, the strange passionate violence of 



A D. 1 1 70. Henry II. and Thomas Becket. 79 

the would-be martyr, finding at the last that he could 
not place a curb on his words or temper, even when he 
was, as he may be truly believed to have been, offering 
up his life for his Church — forms a sad but a thrice- 
told tale. 

Becket died on the 29th of December, 1170, and for 
350 years and more that day was kept in the Church 
of England as one of the chief festivals after Easter, 
Whitsuntide, and Christmas. It is no small proof of 
the strength of character which certainly marks Becket 
throughout his versatile career, that he should have 
made so deep an impression not only on England but 
on Christendom. Although some allowance must be 
made for the influence of superstition, and doubtless of 
imposture also, in the spread of the honour paid to 
him so widely, even such superstitions could not have 
gathered round one whose reputation was. a mere fig- 
ment of monks and legend- writers. He was undoubt- 
edly recognised as the champion of a great cause which 
was then believed to need championship, and which 
through the greatness of the need served to ^j^^ ^.^^^ 
excuse even such championship as it found in glory of 

Becket 

him. But whatever were the cause which he 
was maintaining, he had some part of the glory that 
belongs to all who vindicate liberty, to all who uphold 
weakness against overwhelming strength. 

And in this view of him, in which Englishmen may 
have regarded him as the one man able and daring to 
beard the mighty king whom the memory of his fore- 
fathers had clothed with enhanced terrors, and whose de- 
signs for their good they were too ignorant to appreciate, 
Continental Christendom saw him the champion of the 
papacy as against the secular power. Later generations 
under the recoil of the Reformation viewed him merely 
as a traitor, and liis cultus as an organised imposture. 



8o The Early Plaiitagenets. ad. 1 170. 

More calmly regarded — as now perhaps we may. afford 
to regard Lim — \\& appears, as we have described him, 
a strong, impulsive man, the strength of whose will is out 
of all proportion to the depth of his character, with little 
self-restraint, little self-knowledge, no statesmanlike in- 
sight, and yet too much love of intrigue and craft. He 
is not a constructive reformer in the Church; in the state 
he is obstructive and exasperating. Even on the esti- 
mate of his friends he does not come within the first 
rank of great men. The cause for which he fought was 
not the cause for which he fell, and the cause of liberty, 
which to some extent benefited by his struggle, was not 
the actual cause for which he was consciously fighting. 
He appears small indeed by the side of Anselm, who 
knew well how to distinguish between the real and 
factitious importance of the claims which he made or 
resisted; small indeed by the side of his successor, St. 
Edmund, who, brave as Thomas himself was to declare 
the right, chose the part of the peace-maker rather than 
that of the combatant and recognised the glory of suf- 
fering patiently. Yet the world's gratitude has often been 
abundantly shown to men who deserved it less. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE LATTER YEARS OF HENRY II. 

Continued reforms — Revolt of 1173-1174 — Renewed industry of 
Henry — His later years — Quarrel with Richard — Fall and death. 

It is one of the most distinct marks of Henry's mind, 
that whatever pressure his most engrossing employments 
Henry's put upon him, he never for a moment gave up 

perseve- ^^ Xrcj^ of developing the great legal reforms 

reform. with which he began his reign. Even at the 

siege of Bridgenorth, in 11 5 5, he had lent an ear to the 



cH. V. Henry II. and his Sons. Si 

suit of the monks of Battle; in the very thick of the 
Becket struggle he was busily employed in reforming the 
criminal law and introducing or expanding the system of 
presentment by grand jury. The same purpose is con- 
stantly maintained, and every great and famous exploit 
of his adventurous life may be matched with some mea- 
sure of practical reform, some step in the progress of a 
policy by which his people were to be made safer and his 
own power consequently to be made stronger. Through- 
out the whole reign there may be traced a constant and 
progressive policy of taking power out of the rj,^^ ^j.j.j_ 
hands of the great vassals of the crown, of cal object 
entrusting power to the great body of the free 
men of the nation, and of consolidating the royal autho- 
rity by employing the people in the maintenance of law. 
The blow struck at the military power of feudalism by 
the institution of scutage, the commutation of personal 
service in the held for a money payment, was one of the 
first of his distinctive measures. The judicial power of 
the same body he limited, quite as much, by the mission 
of itinerant judges throughout the country to itinerant 
hear the suits of the people and to punish justices. 
criminals. These visitations had been practised under 
Henry I.; they were restored by Henry 11. at the begin- 
ning of the reign. These officers were employed not 
only for the trial of prisoners and determination of law- 
suits, but for the assessment and collection of revenue. 
When the national council had decreed a tax, the itinerant 
judges, as Barons of the Exchequer, travelled through 
the land, fixing the payments to be made by 

, ^ ° . ^. ■'. - - ^ ^ Fiscalwork. 

the towns or by mdividuals. It was not a 
very difficult business, for as all the revenue was raised 
from the land and the land remained divided in much the 
same proportions as it was in the Domesday Book, that 
famous record became, as it were, the rate-book of the 

M. H. G 



82 The Early Plantagenets. ch. v. 

country ; every landowner could refer to it, to see what 
was the valuation of his property, and be taxed accord- 
ingly. Only the towns, therefore, which had grown in 
wealth and number since the time of the Conqueror's 
survey, would have occasion for debating with the 
judges how much they would have to pay. Almost every 
year of Henry's reign we find these officers making their 
circuits, which are the historical origin of the circuits 
Circuits of of the Judgcs of Assizc in the present day. 
judges. Sometimes, in the earlier part of the reign, 

one or two go over the whole country; sometimes six 
circuits are made, each managed by three judges ; some- 
times four circuits of four, or two circuits of five or more. 
The chief epochs of this development are these : the year 
1 1 66, when the Assize of Clarendon was published ; the 
year ,1176, when six circuits of three justices did the 
work, under a revised form of the Assize of Clarendon, 
issued at Northampton; and the year 1179, when Henry 
reformed the central as well as the provincial tribunals. 

Of the effects of this system one, the abatement of 
the power of the feudal courts of justice by forcing them 
Training of Under royal jurisdiction, has been noticed 
in^sSf°go^ already. A second was the training of the 
vernment. people generally, through the use of juries 
which were employed both for legal and fiscal business ; 
they thus learned to manage their own affairs and to keep 
up an intelligent interest in legislation and political busi- 
ness. A third was, to limit the power of the sheriffs, who 
being the sole royal representatives in the shires, judicial, 
military, and fiscal, had great chances of exercising irre- 
sponsible tyranny, of which the books of the time contain 
many complaints. Besides the visitations of the judges 
Henry from time to time used still stronger measures 
of remedy or precaution against the oppressions of the 
sherifts. In 11 70 he turned them all out of office, and 



cH. V. He7iry II. and his Sons. "^^ 

held a very strict inquiry into the amount of money they 
had received, filHng up their places- with servants and 
officers of his own court, by whose action the local 
government would be placed in more direct relation to 
the central. 

Nor were these labours solely directed to the reform 
of provincial jurisdiction. Henry IL reformed also the 
supreme court of justice, which was supposed Cemral 
to emanate from liis own person and house- judicature. 
hold, and established a distinct staff of well-instructed 
lawyers to hear the suits that were sent up for his royal 
decision. These men he found it hard work to manage, 
and once in 1178 he swept them all away as summarily 
as he had done the sheriffs in 1170. Sometimes he em- 
ployed clerks, sometimes knights, sometimes prelates, 
in the office of judge, with unequal success, but with a 
never-faltering purpose of securing easy justice. 

In the same way he varied the taxes, from year to 
year, not allowing the same interest to be oppressed with 
continual imposts, but taking now a tallage Variety in 
from the towns, now a scutage or an aid from taxation, 
the landowners or knightly body ; and on the occasion 
of the Crusade, in 11 84 and 11 88, calling for a contribu- 
tion from personal property, a fixed proportion or a tithe 
of goods for the war against Saladin. 

In order finally to secure the defence of the country 
and to have a force on which he could depend for the 
maintenance of peace and order, he armed the Military 
whole free population, or ordered them to pro- system. 
vide arms, according to a fixed scale, proportioned to 
their substance. Thus he restored the ancient Anglo- 
Saxon militia system, and supplied the requisite counter- 
balance to the military power of the great feudatories, 
which, notwithstanding the temptation to avoid service 
by payment of scutage, they were still able and too 



84 The Early Plaiitagenets. a.d. 1170. 

willing to maintain. In all these measures we may trace 
one main object, the strengthening of the royal power, 
and one main means or directing principle, the doing 
so by increasing the safety and security of the people. 
Whatever was done to help the people served to reduce 
the power of the great feudal baronage ; to disarm their 
forces, to abolish their jurisdictions, to diminish their 
chances of tyranny. Now all this could not but make 
Henry very much disliked by the great nobles. The 
people of course were slow to see the benefit of the re- 
forms, but the barons were quick enough at detecting 
the measures taken to humiliate and reduce them ; so, 
before Henry gained the affection of the people, he had 
to encounter the hostility of the barons. 

This hostility had been growing for a long time, 
awaiting the opportunity of breaking out into open 
Coronation ^evolt. Such an opportunity the shock which 
of the heir, followed the death of Becket gave it ; and the 
^^^°' very same measure taken by Henry, which 

in its results caused the death of Becket, gave a head 
and a direction, nominally at least, to the outbreak. 
This measure was the coronation of the boy Henry in 
1 1 70. The idea of having the heir-apparent crowned 
in his father's lifetime was not familiar to the English 
or Normans ; the royal succession still retained so much 
of the elective character that it would perhaps have 
been regarded as an unconstitutional measure, thus 
violently and without option to determine the succession 
irrevocably before the vacancy occurred. Much of the 
interest of the reigns of William Rufus and 
custom of Henry I. turns upon this question. William 
the'suc^c'^s? the Conqueror and William Rufus both left the 
sor to the succession undetermined ; hence arose the re- 
bellions of the reign of the Red King and the 
early struggles of Henry I. The measures by which he 



A.D. II70. Henry II. and his Sons. 85 

had done everything in his power to secure and settle it 
had ended in the anarchy under Stephen. But in France 
and Germany this experiment, now tried for securing the 
hereditary succession, was famihar ; almost every one of 
the kings who followed Hugh Capet had had his son 
crowned in his lifetime ; and in Germany since the very 
beginning of the Karohngian empire such cases had been 
frequent. Frederick Barbarossa at this very moment 
was working for the succession of his own son ; and the 
introduction of a second or inchoate partner in sovereignty, 
under the name of King of the Romans, became later on 
a part of the ordinary machinery of the empire. It is 
possible that Henry II. had this object solely and simply 
in view ; but another theory is conceivable. 

Henry well knew by what very discordant nationali- 
ties his states were peopled ; and he entertained the 
idea of dividing his dominions among his Henry's 
sons at his death. To Richard, the second l^^^^^ 
son, as his mother's heir, Aquitaine and Poic- this. 
tou were already given; for Geoffre^^ he'had obtained 
the succession to the duchy of Briftany, and he was 
thinking of Ireland to be conquered for a kingdom for 
John. Henry, the eldest son, would of course have 
his father's inheritance, England, Normandy, and Anjou. 
Such a division the king actually made, when in the 
autumn of 1170 he beheved himself to be at the point of 
death ; and he brought up his sonsamong the people they 
were to rule, Henry among the Normans, Richard among 
the Poictevins. It would be still a question whether the 
elder brother should govern the family estates, as had 
been the case in the early Karohngian empire, his 
brethren owning his feudal superiority; or whether each 
should possess his provinces in sovereignty subject only 
to the already existing feudal claims. 

However, when Henry began, as early as 1160, to 



86 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1171. 

broach the subject of his son's coronation he was only 
twenty-seven years old, and probably thought more of 
securing the allegiance and attachment of the English 
for the child, than of the chances which might follow his 
own death; and later on we find him anxious to abridge 
the tedious parts of the royal duties by sharing them with 
the heir, although he never would part with one iota of 
the substance of power. Hence, then, the coronation of 
Henry the younger in 1170, the anger of Lewis VH. be- 
cause his daughter was not also crowned, and the quarrel 
among the bishops which caused Beckef s death. 

Henry — for we must now return to the direct string of 
the story — was momentarily paralysed at the news of the 
jjgj^^ martyrdom. He saw how the blame was sure 

applies to to fall upon him, and how all his enemies 
Becket^s^ *^" would sooner or later take the opportunity to 
death. overwhelm him. Immediately, therefore, he 

sent envoys to Rome to promise any terms whatever 
for acquittal or absolution. Whilst this negotiation was 
pending, knowing that the legates, for whom Lewis, 
before the death of Becket, had applied, were on their 
way to Normandy, and would not scruple to exert the 
utmost of their power against him, he organised an expe- 
Ex edition dition to Ireland, which for the last sixteen 
to Ireland, years had been his by papal grant, and for 
^^^^" the last four had been undergoing the process 

of conquest in the hands of Richard de Clare, surnamed 
Strongbow. In Ireland he stayed from the autumn of 
1 171 to the Easter of 1172, receiving the submission of 
kings and bishops, and really keeping out of the way of 
the hostile legates : awaiting the arrival of the friendly 
legates who were coming to absolve him. 

Now, no doubt it appears strange that the Court of 
Rome should at this same moment be pouring out both 
sweet water and bitter \ that the supreme judge on earth 



A.D. 1 1 72. Henry II. and his Sons. Sy 

should send forth a legation to put Henry's dominions 
under interdict for one act and directly after send another 
to absolve him for what seems a more heinous character of 
one. It must, however, be remembered that the Court of 
in this the papal court was rather acting as a 
great tribunal of international arbitration than as the 
council of a Christian bishop. The Court of Rome was 
a great legal machine, the disadvantages of which are 
manifest at first sight, but the benefit of which in a 
warlike age can scarcely be overrated, although less 
obvious at a glance. A very severe judgment may per- 
haps be allowable, as to the assumptions and arrogance 
and unrighteousness of the papacy in taking the office 
of international arbitration ; but judged by its results it 
was for the time a great public benefit, for it stopped and 
hindered the constant appeals to war. Thus viewed the 
Court of Rome was as open for suitors as any simple 
court of justice : an applicant who wanted legal redress 
applied for a commission of inquiry or a legation. In 
so doing he brought the usual means to bear on the 
papal officials, who no doubt found it to their interest 
to keep their minds always open, to hear both sides, and 
to keep their purses also open to receive the contribu- 
tions of all sides in each suit, and thus maintain the 
wealth and power of the court itself. It is not to be 
denied that, however arrived at, the decisions ultimately 
given were in most cases fair and just. 

Henry, then, on this occasion eluded one legation and 
welcomed another. In 1172 he met the friendly cardi- 
nals at Avranches, took all the oaths they Henry's 
proposed, renounced the Constitutions of and^absolu- 
Clarendon, purged himself of the guilt of tion, 1172. 
Becket's death, declared his adherence to Alexander III., 
as Catholic Pope, in refutation of the statement that he 
had acknowledged the anti-Pope, and received full abso- 



88 The Early Plantagenets^ a.d. 1173. 

lution. He then, by way of general pacification, had 
g , his son re-crowned and his wife crowned with 

coronation him, and went down to the South of France 
to make a lasting peace with the Count of 
Toulouse, and to bargain for the marriage of John with 
the heiress of the county of Maurienne and Savoy. 

The storm seemed to have blown over ; unfortunately 
the lull preceded the great outbreak. Strange to say, the 
Quarrel of immediate occasion for the strife was the 
the two little boy John, the five-year-old bridegroom. 

eniys. ^^ j^.^ great enemies Henry had silenced ; 

Lewis had got his daughter crowned, the Pope was paci- 
fied, the barons were secured by the strength of the home 
government, the Scots were humble and obliging, all the 
sons were friends. The little child who in the end broke 
his heart was already a stumbling-block. The Count of 
Maurienne naturally asked what provision was to be made 
by Henry for his son's marriage. Henry found himself 
obliged to ask his elder sons to give up for their brother 
some few castles out of their promised shares of his 
dominions. The eldest son refused ; he would give up 
nothing; he had got nothing by being crowned, he was 
not trusted to go about alone; let the king give him some 
real power, England or Normandy, then he might have 
something that he could give up. The ill-conditioned 
lad nursed his grievance, and, early in the spring of 
1 1 73, fled from his father's court and threw himself into 
the arms of Lewis. Queen Eleanor too, whose influence 
with her husband was lessened by her misguidance of 
her children, and by the evil habits which Henry himself 
had contracted during the Becket quarrel, used all her 
influence to increase the breach in her family. She 
intrigued with her first husband against her second, 
and brought even Richard into the list of his father's 
enemies. 



A.D. 1 1 73. Henry II. and his Sons. 89 

Thus, then, early in 1173a head was provided for a 
great confederation of French lords and English barons, 
actively aided by Lewis of France, Philip of q^.^^^ 
Flanders, the Counts of Champagne and the league 
King of Scots, William the Lion, who had Henry, 
succeeded Malcolm IV. in 1165. The younger "^3- 
Henry, liberal in promises, proposed to reward with 
vast English estates the men who were to help in 
renewing the glories of the Conquest. And the great 
English earls, Chester, Leicester, and Norfolk, were bent 
on reviving the feudal influence which Henry's reforms 
had so weakened. These earls were mighty men on both 
sides of the Channel: the Norman quarrel could be fought 
in England as well as in Normandy, Anjou, and Poictou. 
Measures were contrived at Paris for a universal rising. 
And the success of the design seemed at first almost 
certain. Henry had a large force of Brabangon merce- 
naries about him, but scarcely any other force on which 
he could depend at all. 

The war began by a Flemish invasion of Normandy; 
then the Earl of Chester raised Brittany against the king ; 
then the Poictevins rose in arms. From France „, , . 

vVar DC£rins. 

the torch was handed to England. William the 
Lion, with a half-barbarian army, began a devastating 
march southward ; the Earl of Leicester landed a great 
force of Flemings in Norfolk; the Earl Ferrers of Derby 
fortified his castles in the midland counties ; old Hugh- 
Bigot of Norfolk, who had sworn the disinheritance of 
Matilda in 1135, garrisoned his castles — all England was 
in an uproar. The old justiciar, the king's lieutenant, 
Richard de Lucy, was bewildered ; and the great Bishop 
of Durham, Hugh de Puiset, King Stephen's nephew, 
began to play a double game, negotiating with the Scots, 
and allowing the landing of Flemish mercenaries, to be 
used at discretion. 



90 The Eai'ly Plaiitagenets. a.d. 1173. 

Two influences, however, turned the scale against this 
overwhelming preponderance of treachery and force — 
Henry's Henry's wonderful energy, which his contem- 

success. poraries called supernatural good luck, and 

the faithfulness of the English people, who now, when 
the crucial test was applied to them, amply repaid the 
many years of culture spent upon them. Henry had 
been taken by surprise by the general onset ; and, un- 
willing to believe in the ingratitude of his boys, he at 
first was slow to move against them ; but he showed ex- 
traordinary promptness when he saw the state of affairs 
and had made up his mind how to act. Having put 
Lewis VII. to ignominious flight at Conches, he rushed 
down upon Dol, in Brittany, where he captured the Earl 
^ ^ of Chester and the chief Breton and Angevin 

rebels; and during the autumn of 1173, before 
the worst news from England arrived, he had captured 
one after the other the nests of rebellion in Maine. At 
Christmas he concluded a three months' truce with Lewis 
and undertook the pacification of Poictou, which em- 
ployed him until the next summer, fretting and chafing 
against the detention which kept him away from Eng- 
land. 

In England matters had gone on more slowly, owing 
to the unprepared state of the ministry and the general 
War in feeling of apprehension and mistrust. There, 

Eng'and. however, Henry had some men on whom he 
could depend : Richard de Lucy the justiciar ; Ranulf 
Glanvill, the great lawyer, who was rising into the first 
rank as a minister; Reginald Earl of Cornwall, the king's 
uncle ; the Earl of Arundel, husband of Queen Adeliza, 
widow of Henry I., and others connected with the royal 
house. These men had insufficient forces at their dis- 
posal, and were at first unable to decide whether the 
Scots in the North, or the Earl of Leicester in the East, 



A. D. II 74. Henry II. and his Sons. 9 1 

or the midland revolt under Earl Ferrers, was the most 
formidable. At last, having made up their minds to 
make a truce with the Scots, they moved upon Norfolk, 
and defeated the earls in October, at Fornham St. Gene- 
vieve. There they took prisoners the Earl of Leicester 
and his wife, the great Lady Petronilla, whose compre- 
hensive soul embodied all the spite and arrogance and 
vindictiveness of the oligarchy of the Conquest. She, 
as heiress of Grantmesnil, had brought a great inherit- 
ance to her husband, the degenerate heir of the faithful 
Beaumonts ; for the Leicester Beaumonts were the only 
house which since the Conquest had been uniformly 
faithful to the Conqueror and his heirs. This great 
success enabled Henry to remain in Poictou during the 
winter and spring of 1174, and allowed the ministers to 
concentrate their force against the Scots, The people 
rose against the feudal party, and a brisk struggle was 
kept up in the interior of the country until the summer. 
William the Lion spent his time in securing capture of 
the border castles, seeking his own ends, in- wiUiamthe 
stead of pressing southwards, and so doing 
his part to overturn Henry's throne. At last, early in July 
1 174, he was surprised and taken prisoner at Alnwick by 
the host of Yorkshire men and the loyal barons. 

Just at the same moment Henry had crossed from 
Normandy with his Brabangons, and made a pilgrimage 
to Becket's grave. His triumph was now regarded as a 
token of Divine forgiveness. He marched at Henry's 
once into Norfolk, where he received the sub- En-^ianlT 
mission of the Bigots and the Mowbrays, the 1^74- 
latter of whom had been overcome by the king's natural 
son, Geoffrey, now bishop elect of Lincoln, and after- 
wards so well known as Archbishop of York. All his 
foes were now at his feet ; the King of Scots and the two 
great earls were prisoners ; the rest entirely humiliated. 



92 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1175/ 

In less than a month from his landing he was able to go 
back to Normandy. 

The French war came to an end on the collapse of 
End of tha the English rebellion, and in the month of 
^^'^- September all Henry's dominions were at 

rest, his children reconciled, even the King of France 
admitted to peace. 

And now we have true evidence of Henry's real 
greatness in policy and spirit, notwithstanding his pro- 
vocations and the changed strain of his character and 
temper. He shed no blood, he took no ransoms, he 
condemned to destitution not one of the leaders of the 
rebellion ; he laid his hands for a few years on their 
estates, but even these were shortly restored, and no 
man was disinherited by way of punishment. But he 
pulled down their castles. The nests of feudal tyranny 
and insubordination he not merely dismantled, but in 
some cases destroyed so utterly as to leave not one 
stone upon another, that they might be no more the 
beginning or the temptation to such a design. Against 
the Scots his hand was very heavy ; he insisted on abject 
submission. Before he would release the king from his 
Submission Captivity he insisted that he should do ho- 
of Scotland, mage, acknowledging the supremacy of his 
crown over the Scottish crown, and of the 
English Church over the Scottish. The Scottish barons 
must become his men ; the Scottish bishops must declare 
their obedient subjection to the English Church ; and the 
castles of the Lowlands must be retained in the hands of 
men whom he should place there with English garrisons. 
This humiliating negotiation, concluded at Falaise before' 
William's liberation, was confirmed at York in the follow- 
ing August. From this time, until Richard I. sold back 
to William the Lion the rights that he had lost, Scotland 
was subject to the English king as overlord, and her 



A.D. 1 1 75. Henry 11. and his Sons. 93 

king as king was our king's vassal. The Church, how- 
ever, escaped subjection, because the archbishops of 
Canterbury and York could not agree which should rule 
her, and before their quarrel was ended the Pope stepped 
in and declared the Scottish Church the immediate care 
and peculiar daughter of the Roman see. Besides this, 
the half-independent prince of Galloway was compelled 
to acknowledge himself a vassal of both the kings. 

So completely was the authority of Henry 11. re- 
established by the peace of 1174, that we are almost 
tempted to underrate the importance of the importance 
elements that had been arrayed against him. of this 
It was not, however, in the want of strength 
and spirit that the confederation against him failed ; the 
kings of France and Scotland, the counts of Champagne, 
Boulogne, and Flanders, the earls of Chester, Leicester, 
Norfolk, and Derby, his own sons and his own wife, 
were united in their hostility. The religious feeling of 
the nation, which since the death of Becket had to a re- 
markable degree realised or rather exaggerated his merits 
as a statesman and a churchman, was used as a weapon 
against him. Every interest that he had injured, or that 
had suffered in the process of his reforms, was made to 
take its part. Yet all failed. They failed partly, no doubt, 
because they had really no common cry, no common 
cause. They had many grievances and a good oppor- 
tunity ; but all their several aims were selfish ; their plan, 
so far as they had one, destructive not constructive ; their 
leaders unwilling to sacrifice or risk anything of their 
own, greedy to grasp what belonged of right to the king, 
the nation, or even to their own fellows. They fought 
one by one against a prompt, clear-headed, accomplished 
warrior, and they were beaten one by one ; not, how- 
ever, without a very considerable intermingling of what 
is ordinarily called good fortune on the king's side. 



94 I'h^ Early Plantagenets. a.d, 1176- 

Thus Henry in the twentieth year of his reign was more 
powerful by far than when, at the beginning of it, the 
desire and darhng of the whole people, he brought back 
peace and light and liberty after the evil days. 

.The general line of policy which Henry had hitherto 
pursued he took up almost at the identical point at which 
jj it had been interrupted by the rebellion ; but 

resumes instead of seeking for John a provision on the 

ernes. (^Qj^^-jnent, he determined to find him a wife 
and an endowment in England, and, when he should be 
old enough, to make him king of Ireland. With this idea 
Pr vision ^'^ arranged for him, in 1176, a marriage with 
made for Hawisia, the daughter of William Earl of 
Gloucester, his cousin; and the next year, 
in a great assembly at Oxford, he divided the still uncon- 
quered provinces of Ireland into great fiefs, the receivers 
of which took the oath of fealty, not only to himself, but 
to John as their future king. The Pope also was can- 
vassed as to the erection of Ireland into a kingdom and 
the coronation of John. The same year Johanna, the 
Marrla es king's youngest daughter, was married with 
of the king's very great pomp to the young king William 
aug ers. ^^ Good, as he is called, of Sicily, a prince 
who had an unbounded admiration for his father-in-law, 
and would have settled the reversion of his kingdoms 
upon him if Henry had accepted the offer. Eleanor, the 
second daughter, was already married to Alfonso, King 
of Castille, who in 1177 referred to the judgment of 
Henry a great lawsuit between himself and his kinsman 
the King of Navarre. This arbitration not only illustrates 
the estimation in which Henry after his great victory was 
held on the Continent, but shows us also how he delibe- 
rated with his councillors. He held a very great court of 
bishops and superior clergy, of barons and other tenants- 
in-chief, on the occasion; the arguments of the parties 



-1 1 78. Henry II, and his Sons. 95 

were laid before them, and, in conformity with their advice 
asked and given, the judgment was dehvered. 

The two or three years that followed the rebellion 
were the period of Henry's longest stay in England. He 
came in April 1 175, and stayed until August visits to 
1 177; after a year spent in Normandy and England. 
Anjou he returned in 11 78, and stayed until the end of 
June 1 180; after which, although he paid several long 
visits to England, his absences were much longer. These 
years were periods of great activity in political matters. 
The number of councils that he held, the variety of 
public business that he despatched in them, the series of 
changes intended to promote the speedy attainment of 
justice, the unfailing purpose which he showed of fulfil- 
ling the pledge which in his early days he had given to 
his people, all these come out in the simple details of the 
historian with remarkable fulness. Henry was not at this 
time, or ever after, a happy man ; his son Henry, nomi- 
nally reconciled, was constantly intriguing j j , 
against him with his father-in-law, Lewis, and the younger 
the discontented lords of the foreign dominion. ^"^■^" 
He took up the part of an advocate of local rights and 
privileges, and headed confederations against his father, 
and against his brother Richard as the oppressor of the 
barons of Poictou. He complained that his father 
treated him meanly, not giving enough money, and jea- 
lously refusing him his share of power. The father 
treated him generously and patiently, but he could not 
trust him, and did not pretend to do so. 

Queen Eleanor, too, was now imprisoned, or seques- 
tered from her husband in honourable captivity. This 
great lady, who deserves to be treated with Queen 
more honour and respect than she has gene- Eleanor. 
rally met with, had behaved very ill to her husband in 
the matter of the rebellion ; and, although he occasion- 



96 The Early Plaiitagenets. a.d. 1180. 

ally indulged her with the show of royal pomp and power, 
he never released her from confinement or forgave her. 
She was a very able woman, of great tact and experience, 
and still greater ambition ; a most important adviser 
whilst she continued to support her husband, a most dan- 
gerous enemy when in opposition. Her political intrigues 
in the East, when she accompanied her first husband on 
the Crusade, had made him contemptible, and that Lewis 
never forgave her. But her second husband was made 
of sterner stuff. He took and kept the upper hand ; it 
was only after his death that Eleanor's real powers found 
room for play ; and had it not been for her governing 
skill while Richard was iti Palestine, and her influence 
on the Continent during the early years of John, England 
would have been a prey to anarchy, and Normandy lost 
to the house of Anjou long before it was. 

The quarrel with his wife and the mistrust of his chil- 
dren threw the king under very evil influences, although 
as a king he tried hard to do his duty ; and they sowed 
the seed of later difficulties which at last overwhelmed 
him. The internal history of these years is occupied 
with the judicial and financial doings which have been 
sketched in the early pages of this chapter ; outside there 
wis peace, except in Poictou, where Richard was learn- 
ing the art of war, winning his first laurels and making 
his worst and most obstinate enemies. 

In 1 1 80 the long strife and jealousy between Henry 
n. and Lewis VH. came to an end. The weak and un- 
principled King of France, after resigning his 
Philip II., crown to his son Philip, a boy of sixteen, 
^^^^* retired into a convent and died. Philip in- 

herited all his hatred of Henry, although he was better 
able to appreciate his wisdom, and showed in his early 
years a desire to have him as a political adviser and 
instructor. He inherited, too, all his father's falseness, 



A. D. 1 1 83. Henry 11. and his Sons. 97 

craft, and dishonesty, but not his morbid conscience nor 
his irresoluteness. Without being so great a coward as 
his father, Phihp was yet a long way from being a brave 
man, and loses much by his juxtaposition with Richard 
and even with John in that respect. But he was very 
unscrupulous, very pertinacious, and in result very suc- 
cessful, outliving all his rivals, and leaving his king^ 
dom immensely stronger than it was when he succeeded 
to it. In the domestic quarrels of his early years, 
with his stepmother and the counts of Champagne, he 
availed himself of the advice of Henry, which was given 
honestly and effectually ; but, after Henry's quarrels with 
his sons began again, Philip saw his way clearly enough 
to the humiliation of the rival house ; and he took too 
sure and too fatal advantage of his opportunity. 

There is no need to dwell on the events of 1181 and 
1 182 ; the chief mark of the former year is that assize of 
arms which has been already mentioned. In 1182 the 
king was a good deal in Poictou. England was governed 
now, and chiefly for the rest of the reign, by Ranulf 
Glanvill, the chief justiciar, who in 1 1 80 or 1 1 79 had 
succeeded to Richard de Lucy. The country was quiet ; 
so quiet, that when the troubles began on the Continent 
not a hand or foot in England stirred against the king. 
English history during these and the following years is a 
simple record of steady growth ; all interest, personal and 
political, centres in the king. 

The year 1 183 begins with a new phase. The young 
king had of late shown himself somewhat more dutiful. 
His father was now in his fiftieth year, and second 
that was for the kings of those days a some- revolt of the 
what advanced maturity. The heir seemed ^""'^^ ^^^' 
to have learned that he might, as he must, bide his time. 
The arrangement which was to provide for the continued 
cohesion of the family estates was as yet uncompleted. 

M. H. H 



98 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1183. 

Henry urged that the younger brothers should all do 
homage and swear fealty to the elder. Richard was 
with some difficulty prevailed on to do this; but almost as 
^oon as it was done Henry took advantage of the discon- 
tent of the Poictevins, quarrelled with Richard about the 
custody of a petty castle, and headed a war party against 
him. Their father, who at first perhaps had intended 
that Henry should be allowed to enforce his superiority, 
soon saw that it was his bounden duty to maintain 
the cause of Richard. Geoffrey of Brittany joined his 
eldest brother. Whilst Richard and his father besieged 
Limoges, Henry and Geoffrey allowed their archers to 
shoot at their father; they ill-treated his messengers, 
drove him to desperation, and became desperate them- 
selves. The younger Henry, after feigning reconcilia- 
tions, and more than once cruelly and hypocritically 
deserting his father, tried to recruit his resources by 
plundering the rich shrines of the Aquitanian saints. The 
age saw in his fate speedy vengeance for his impiety, 
his own evil conscience found perhaps in his behaviour 
to his father a still greater burden. Before Limoges was 
His death, taken, the wretched man — for at eight-and- 
^^^3- twenty he was a boy no more — sickened and 

died at Martel, and left no issue. He passed away like 
foam on the water, no man regretting him; lamented 
only as his father's enemy, and by that father who, with 
all his faults and his mismanagement, loved his sons far 
more than they deserved. 

The death of the heir threw upon Richard the right, 
so far as it could be regarded as a right, of succession ; 
Distrust of it reopened also the question about the por- 
Richard. ^jqj^ q£ Queen Margaret, the castles of the 
Vexin which Henry had so craftily got into his hands 
in consequence of the marriage. These castles he re- 
fused to restore to the King of France. Richard's claim 



A.D. 1 185. Henry II. and Jiis Sons. 99 

to the fealty of the barons he could not allow to be 
recognised, lest Richard should attempt to play against 
him the part which his elder brother had played. He 
wished also that the Aquitanian heritage should be made 
over to John, especially after the death of Death of 
Geoffrey of Brittany, which occurred in 1 1 86, Geoffrey. 
no right of succession being allowed to the baby Arthur, 
born after his father's death. Hence there were constant 
feuds and difficulties, mainly, however, on the French side 
of the Channel, Philip fomenting the family discord. 

The threatening condition of Palestine long averted 
open war. Henry was the head of the house of Anjou, 
from which the Frank kings of Jerusalem, de- r,,, , 

<=> J ' ihe house 

scended from Fulk, his grandfather, drew their of Anjou at 
origin. Baldwin the Leper, the son of King J^"^"^^^"^- 
Amalric the conqueror of Egyptian Babylon, was waging 
a very unequal fight against Saladin, Sultan of Egypt 
and Syria. It was a brilliant struggle, but against fearful 
odds. A prey to a sickness which physically disabled 
him, weakened by the divisions of a court speculating 
already on his death and the break-up of the kingdom ; 
at the head of an aristocratic body which had in a single 
century learned all the vices and none of the virtues of 
the East ; with the knightly orders quarrelling with one 
another ; with the barons of the kingdom playing the part 
of traitors, the princes of the confederation leaguing with 
Saladin, and the ablest of his allies utterly unfettered by 
the sense of honour; — Baldwin in despair sent the keys 
of the Holy Sepulchre to Henry of England, as his kins- 
man, and prayed him to come to the rescue. Then he 
died and left the kingdom first to his baby nephew, then 
to his sister Sibylla and Guy of Lusignan her husband. 
The mission of the patriarch Heraclius, in 1185, was 
received with little enthusiasm in the West. Some two 
or .three great English barons, Hugh of Beauchamp and 



100 The Early Plantagenets. a. d, 1 187-8. 

Roger Mowbray, went ; but the English Church and baron- 
age, assembled at the Council of Clerkenwell, told the king 
that it was his first duty to stay at home and keep the 
Jerusalem promises made in his coronation oath. He 
taken. himself could do no more than offer contribu- 

tions in money. The patriarch went off in disgust ; and 
before anything was really done Saladin had captured the 
king, the True Cross, and the holy city. 

This news, which reached England in October or 
November 1187, silenced for a moment the petty quar- 
rels of the West. But it was for a moment only. At 
the first shock of the tidings Henry and Phihp laid 
aside their grievances. Richard was the first to take 
the cross. The popes one after another in cjuick suc- 
The Third cession issued impassioned adjurations that 
Crusade. peace should be made, and ' that one great 
Catholic Crusade should rescue imperilled Christendom. 
The Emperor himself, the lord of the Western world, 
the great Frederick, declared that he would go to Pales- 
tine with all the German chivalry. In England and 
France went out a decree that all men who had anything 
should pay a tenth towards the Crusade. The Saladin 
tithe was enacted by a great assembly of all England, 
at Geddington, near Northampton, and it was the first 
case in which Englishmen ever paid a general tax on all 
their goods and chattels. This was done in February 
1 1 88. The money was hastily collected. It was yet 
uncertain whether the king would go himself or send 
Richard or John or both. But the moment of peace 
was over, and for Henry at least the end was coming. 

The last storm arose in the South; the quarrel be- 

Henry'slast ^^^^^ Richard and the Count of Toulouse, 

quarrel, beginning about a little matter, drew in both 

Henry and Philip. Philip complained to Henry 

of the misrule of his son. Henry disowned the measures 



A.D. 1 189. Henry 11. and his Sons. loi 

of Richard ; and Philip invaded Berry. At first Richard 
acted in concert with his father, drove Phihp out of Berry, 
and recovered the places that he had taken. Henry was 
in England at the time of the outbreak. He sent over 
first the Archbishop of Canterbury, then John, and at last, 
in July 1 188, left his kingdom never to return. The name 
of the great king was, at first, potent enough. Philip sued 
for peace; the Counts Sbf Champagne insisted that there 
should be peace until the Crusade was over. Once and 
again the two kings met, and failed to come to a recon- 
ciliation. In November Richard began to waver : he did 
homage to Philip for all the French provinces, Richard 
saving, however, his fealty to his father. A J^^"^^ Philip, 
truce was made, and the Pope sent a legate to turn the 
truce into a peace. But when the time of truce expired 
Richard had gone over to Philip, and actually joined in 
the invasion of his father's territories. Philip insisted 
that Richard should be acknowledged heir : Henry hesi- 
tated ; Richard suspected that John was to supplant him : 
John was bribed to take part with his father's enemies. 
Henry, unable to believe the monstrous conspiracy, for 
the first time in his life showed want of resolution ; he 
did not draw his forces to a head, but deliberated and 
negotiated whilst Richard and Philip were acting. His 
health was failing, and his spirits had failed already. 

So the spring of 1189 went on, Henry staying mostly 
at Saumur, in Anjou, or at Chinon ; and Philip watching 
for his opportunity. At length, on May 28, after a con- 
ference at la Ferte Bernard, in which Henry, as it was 
said, bribed the papal legate to take his side, Phihp finally 
broke into war; carried almost by surprise the chief 
castles of Maine, and with a good fortune which he could 
scarcely realise captured the city of le Mans Capture of 
itself, which Henry, although at the head of ^^ ^^"s- 
a stout force of knights, refused to defend. Wretchedly 



102 The Early Plantagenets. a.d, 1189. 

ill and broken in spirit, he rode for his life from le 
Mans, to escape from the hands of his son and of 
Philip. This was on June 12. Le Mans was Henry's 
birthplace; there his father was buried, and he had 
loved the place very much; it was also a very strong 
place, and when it was taken he knew that sooner or 
later Tours must go too. But even before Tours was 
taken all was lost, for Henry seemed to think that he 
had nothing left to live or fight for. Scarcely able to 
Henry's sit on horseback, he rode all day from le 

flight. Mans, and rested at night at la Frenaye, on 

the way to Normandy, where the chief part of his force 
and all his strength lay. Geoffrey, his natural son and 
chancellor, afterwards Archbishop of York, was with him, 
and the poor father clung to him in his despair. To him, 
through his friend Giraldus Cambrensis, we owe the story 
of these sad days. 

Henry was worn out with illness and fatigue — he 
would, he said, lie down and die : at night he would not 
His last be undressed ; Geoffrey threw his cloak on him 

days. a^nd watched by his side. In the morning the 

king declared that he could not leave Anjou; Geoffrey 
was to go on to Alengon with the troops. He would 
return to Chinon. Geoffrey was not allowed to depart until 
the Steward of Normandy had sworn that, should the 
king die, he would surrender the castles only to John; 
for Henry did not yet know the treachery of his fa- 
vourite child. All was done as he bade; Geoffrey se- 
cured Alengon and then returned to look for his father ; 
he found him at a place called Savigny, and took him 
to Chinon, as he wished. For a fortnight Philip pur- 
sued his conquests unimpeded. Henry moved again to 
Saumur, and was there visited by the Counts of Cham- 
pagne ; but he had neither energy, nor apparently even 
the will, to strike a blow or to come to a decision that 
would ensure peace. A conference was fixed for June 



A.D. 1 189. Henry II. and his So7is. 103 

30, at Azai, but when the day came Henry was too ill to 
attend ; and Philip and Richard went off loudly exclaim- 
ing that it was a false excuse. The same day Philip 
came to Tours. Again the princes interfered ; but Philip 
would not listen. On July 3 he took the city. Then 
Henry, dying as he was, made his last effort; he was 
carried from Saumur to Azai, mounted there on horse- 
back, and met his two foes on the plain of Colombieres. 

There, after two attempts to converse, broken by a 
terrible thunderstorm, Henry, held up on horseback by 
his servants, accepted Philip's terms and submitted, 
surrendering all that he was asked to surrender. One 
thing he asked for, the list of the conspirators, to whom 
he was obliged to promise forgiveness. The list was given 
him ; and with reluctance and muttered reproaches, per- 
haps curses also, he gave Richard the kiss of peace. 
He went back to Azai, still transacting some little busi- 
ness on the way, for the monks of Canterbury, who had 
quarrelled with their archbishop, forced themselves into 
his presence and provoked some sharp words of reproof 
even then. Then he opened the list of rebels, and the 
first name that he saw was John's. And that broke his 
heart ; he turned his face to the wall and said, ' I have 
nothing left to care for ; let all things go their way.' 

From that blow he never rallied. He was carried in a 
litter to Chinon, chafing against the shame of defeat and 
the mortification of his love. Geoffrey sat by him fan- 
ning him in the sultry air and driving away the flies 
that teased him. To him Henry confided his last wishes. 
He told him that he was to be Archbishop of York, and 
gave him his ring, with the seal of the panther, to give 
to the King of Castille ; then he ordered them to take 
him up, on his bed, and lay him before the Death of 
altar of the castle chapel ; there he received Henry II. 
the last sacraments and died, two days after the meeting 
at Colombieres. 



I04 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1189. 

There is hardly in all English history a more striking 
catastrophe or a scene in itself more simply touching. So 
much suffering, so great a fall, from such grandeur to 
such humiliation, such bitter sorrow, the loss of every- 
thing worth having, power and peace and his children's 
love, may have stirred in him in that last moment the 
thought of forgiveness. But Richard saw him alive no 
more ; and when at the funeral, at Font Evraud, he met 
the bier on which his father's body lay, blood flowed 
forthwith from the nostrils of the dead king, as if his 
spirit were indignant at his coming. 



CHAPTER VI. 

RICHARD CGEUR DE LION. 

Character of the reign — Richard's first visit to England — His cha- 
racter—The Crnsade — Fall of Longchamp — Richard's second 
visit — His struggle with Phihp — His death. 

The historical interest of the reign of Richard I. is of 
two sorts : there is abundance of personal adventure 
and incident, and there is a certain quantity of legal and 
constitutional material which it is easier to interweave 
into a general disquisition on such subjects than to 
invest with a unity and plot of its own. But there is 
no great national change, no very pronounced develop- 
ment, no crisis of stirring interest or great permanent im- 
port. The strong system of government introduced by 
Henry II. was gaining still greater strength and consis- 
tency; the royal power, which it was the first object of 
that system to consolidate, was growing stronger and 
stronger, and the nation in general, whilst it was passing 
through that phase in which a strong government is a 
necessary guide and discipline, was benefiting by the 
policy which must sooner or later educate it to remedy 



A. D. 1 189. Richard Cceur de Lion. 105 

the abuses andperhaps to overthrow the strong govern- 
ment itself. But as yet the royal power was wielded by 
men who used it like statesmen, and the strength of the 
nation was not tempted to assert itself by a premature 
struggle. One great personal struggle there was during 
the reign, and a somewhat interesting one in point of 
detail, but it is one which typified and prefigured rather 
than formed a link in the chain of causes that brought 
about the struggle of Runnymede. 

The great subjects of romantic interest are Richard's 
crusade, captivity, and death. England had little to do 
with these, except as being the source for the supply of 
treasure ; she scarcely saw Richard ; to her the king was 
little more than a political expression which furnished 
arguments to a series of powerful administrators, William 
Longchamp, Walter of Coutances, Hubert Walter, and 
Geofirey FitzPeter. But as connecting English with 
Continental history the personal career of Richard has 
its own interest and value, and, even in a rapid survey 
like the present, it demands, if not the first place, cer- 
tainly one which is second to no other. 

Richard, as we have seen, was not acknowledged by 
his father as his heir, nor had he received the homage of 
the barons as presumptive successor, until he Richard's 
had wrung the concession from the dying succession. 
Henry on the field of Colcmbieres. The fact that, with- 
out a word of opposition, he was received as Duke of 
Normandy, Count of Anjou, and King of the English, im- 
mediately on the news of his father's death, proves that 
the doctrine of hereditary succession was, in practice if 
not in theory, already admitted as the lawful one, and 
that Henry's reforms had left the countries subject to his 
immediate sway in such order that no one even ventured 
to take advantage of the interregnum to disturb the 
peace. It also proves that Richard had strong friends. 



io6 The Early Plantagenets, a.d. 1189. 

Among these the first was his mother, who^ rejoicing in 
Eleanor her dcHverance by Henry's death from her 

regent. \on^ Captivity, placed herself at the head of 

the English government, and, empowered by Richard, 
ruled as regent until his arrival. One reason for this 
probably was that Ranulf Glanvill, the justiciar, had 
been a confidential friend of Henry, and may have been 
suspected of promoting the design of placing John upon 
the throne. For more than a month Eleanor reigned, 
Richard spending the time in making terms with Philip^ 
who had become his enemy as soon as he succeeded to 
his father's place, and in receiving the formal investi- 
ture of- the several dignities which he claimed on the 
Continent. 

In the middle of August he came to England, and 
John with him. After a magnificent progress of little more 
Coronation than a fortnight, he was crowned with exceed- 
of Richard, jj^g great pomp at Westminster, on the 3rd of 
September. This is the first coronation the state cere- 
monies of which have been exactly recorded, and it has 
remained a precedent for all subsequent occasions : the 
religious services of course are much older. It was un- 
fortunately disgraced by a riot promoted by Richard's 
Persecution foreign attendants against the Jews, who, 
of the Jews, notwithstanding the king's exertions, were 
severely handled, robbed, and murdered, the example 
being followed, as soon as his personal protection was 
removed, at York, Stamford, and St. Edmund's. 

Richard at the time of his coronation was thirty-two 
years old ; a man of tall stature, like his father and elder 
brother, ruddy and brown-haired, and giving already 
some indications of corpulence, which he tried to keep 
down by constant exercise. In dress he was very splendid 
and ostentatious, therein unlike his father. The dissimi- 
larity in character was greater. Richard was foolishly 



A. D. 1 189. Richm^d Coeur de Lion. 107 

extravagant, as lavish of money as Henry was sparing, 
and as unscrupulous in his ways of exacting character of 
it as his father was cautious and considerate. Richard. 
At this period of his life he had no pronounced political 
views ; he had taken the Cross, and was that very rare 
phenomenon, an ardent Crusader, but he had not yet 
conceived a political scheme as King of England or as 
enemy of the King of France. He had not thought of 
taking into his hands the strings of that foreign policy 
for which Henry had sacrificed so much. He despised 
his friend Philip far more than his knowledge of him 
or the results of their intercourse justified him in doing ; 
he trusted in himself far more than any man should 
do who has any sense of the rights or duties of king- 
ship. He was a thorough warrior; personally brave, 
fearless in danger, politic and cautious in planning and 
rapid in executing, exhibiting in battle the very faculties 
which deserted him in council — circumspection, self-con- 
trol, readiness. He cared more for the glory of victory 
than either for the fame or the substance of it ; it was 
his very joy to excel in arms, rather than to win re- 
nown or profit ; yet for both renown and profit he had an 
insatiable thirst also. He was eloquent, generous, and 
impulsive. In religion he was perhaps more sincere than 
his family generally were : he heard mass daily, and on 
three occasions did penance in a very remarkable way, 
simply on the impulse of his own distressed conscience. 
He did not show the carelessness in divine things that 
marked the house of Anjou, still less the brutal profanity 
of John. But notwithstanding this he was a vicious 
man, a bad husband and a bad son ; vicious, although 
his vices did not, like those of his father and brother, 
complicate his public policy. All one can say about this 
is that, when he professed penitence, he seems to have 
been sincerely penitent. His best trait is the forgiving- 



io8 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1189. 

ness of his character, and that is especially shown in his 
treatment of John. 

The accession of such a prince might well be watched 
with interest; but Richard was as yet scarcely known in 
England. He had been born, indeed, either at Oxford or 
at Woodstock, and his nurse was a Wiltshire or Oxford- 
shire woman ; but when quite a child he had been taken 
abroad, and had only visited England two or three times 
for a month or so since. Hence, although he was a fair 
scholar and a poet, it may be questioned whether he could 
speak a sentence in English. He had been educated^ in 
fact, to be Duke of Aquitaine, and it was only since his 
brother's death that he had been an object of interest on 
this side the Channel. No doubt changes were looked 
for; and in one respect change came, for very early he 
removed Glanvill from the office of Justiciar and made 
him pay a very heavy fine before he released him from 
custody. But this act was probably one of greed rather 
than of policy, for he wanted money, and did not specu- 
late on statecraft. Glanvill, too, was bound on the Cru- 
sade, and was an old man whose days of governing were 
over. 

The same want of money led Richard, in a great 
council which he held at Pipewell in the month of the 
Council of coronation, to sell almost everything that he 
Pipewell. could Sell : sheriffdoms, justiceships, church 
lands, and appointments of all kinds. To the King of 
Scots he sold the release from the obligations which 
Henry had exacted in the peace of Falaise ; to the 
Bishop of Durham he sold the office of Justiciar, or a 
share in it, and the county of Northumberland; to the 
Bishop of Winchester he sold the sheriffdom of Hamp- 
shire, and castles and lands belonging of old to his see. 
Many other prelates paid large sums to secure rights and 
properties which were their own, but which were deemed 



A.D. 1 190. RicJiard Cceur de Lion. 109 

safer for the royal confirmation ; and so great were the 
promises of money made to him that, if they had been 
fulfilled, he would have been richer by far than all the 
kings that were before him. He filled up the bishoprics 
with officers of his father's court. York he gave to 
his half-brother Geoffrey the Chancellor; Salisbury to 
Hubert Walter, nephew of the Justiciar Glanvill ; Lon- 
don to Richard the son of old Bishop Nigel of Ely the 
treasurer, and himself also treasurer and historian of the 
Exchequer. 

He also made great provision for John. He had him 
married, as soon as he could, to the heiress of Glouces- 
ter, to whom he had been so long betrothed, p,. • ■ 
although the archbishop protested that they made^fo? 
were too near akin. He gave him the counties ^°^^' 
of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Derby, and Not- 
tingham, with divers other castles and honours ; but he 
would not recognise him as his heir or leave him with a 
settled share in the government. The real power he 
placed in the hands of a man whom he had found for 
himself, William Longchamp, who had gone 
through the usual training in the Chancery, of iJng-" 
and whom he now made Chancellor and '^'^^™p- 
Bishop of Ely, To him also he committed the- justiciar- 
ship, in partnership with the Bishop of Durham, after the 
death of WilHam de Mandeville, whom he had meant to 
leave as lieutenant-general of the kingdom ; and before 
his final departure on the Crusade he made him sole 
Justiciar, and obtained for him the office of legate from 
Clement III. 

In order to remove the two greatest obstacles to peace 
he bound his two brothers John and Geoffrey Richard 
to stay away for three years from England, so gusid" ^^^ 
as to leave a clear stage for Longchamp. He upo. 
then prepared for his departure. He left England in 



no The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1189. 

December. After arranging matters in Normandy and 
Poictou, he proceeded to Vezelai, whence he started with 
Philip soon after midsummer. It may be said that, in 
spite of good intentions, he took away with him the 
men whom it would have been wisest to leave behind, 
Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, Ranulf Glanvill, and 
Hubert Walter, and left behind him the uneasy spirits 
whom he might have made useful against the infidel, 
John, Geoffrey, and Longchamp. And this the later his- 
tory proves. At present we will follow Richard. 

The third Crusade, in which he was the foremost 
actor, is one of the most interesting parts of the 
The Third crusading history ; the greatness of the occa- 
Crusade. sion, the grcatucss of the heroes, and the 
greatness of the failure, mark it out especially. And yet 
it was not altogether a failure, for it stayed the Western 
progress of Saladin, and Islam never again had so 
great a captain. Jerusalem had been taken in the 
autumn of 11 87. The king had been taken prisoner 
in the summer. Before or after the capture almost 
every stronghold had been surrendered within the 
territory of Jerusalem. Saving the lordship of Tyre 
and the principahties of Antioch and Tripoli, all the 
Frank possessions had been lost, and only a few moun- 
tain fortresses kept up a hopeless resistance. The 
counsels of the Crusaders were divided; the military 
orders hated and were hated by the Frank nobility ; and 
these, with an admixture of Western adventurers like 
Conrad of Montferrat, played fast and loose with Saladin, 
betraying the interests of Christendom and working up 
in their noble enemy a sum of mistrust and contempt 
which he intended should accumulate till he could take 
full vengeance. 

When King Guy, released from captivity, opened, in 
August 1 189, the siege of Acre, he was probably conscious 



A.D. 1 1 89. Richard Coeur de Lion. ill 

that no more futile design was ever attempted. Yet it 
showed an amount of spirit unsuspected by siege of 
the Western princes, and drew at once to his ^'^'"^• 
side all the adventurous soldiers of the Cross. If he 
could maintain the siege long enough, there were hopes 
of ultimate success against Saladin, of the recovery of 
the Cross and the Sepulchre, for the emperor and the 
kings of the West were all on the road to Palestine. 
Month after month passed on. The Danes and the Flem- 
ings arrived early, but the great hosts lagged strangely 
behind. The great hero Frederick of Hohenstaufen 
started first; he was to go by land. Like a Crusade of 
great king, such as he was, he first set his Frederick. 
realms in order; early in 11 88, at what was called the 
Court of God, at Mentz, he called his hosts together; 
then from Ratisbon, on St. George's day, 1189, he set 
off, like St. George himself, on a pilgrimage against the 
dragons and enchanters that lay in wait for him in the 
barbarous lands of the Danube and in Asia Minor. The 
dragons were plague and famine, the enchanters were 
Byzantine treachery and Seljukian artifice. Through 
both the true and perfect knight passed with neither fear 
nor reproach. In a little river among the mountains of 
Cilicia he met the strongest enemy, and only his bones 
reached the land of his pilgrimage. His people looked 
for him as the Britons for Arthur. They would not 
believe him dead. Stilb legend places him, asleep but 
yet alive, in a cave among the Thuringian mountains, to 
awake and come again in the great hour of German need. 
His diminished and perishing army brought famine and 
pestilence to the besieging host at Acre. His son Frede- 
rick of Swabia, who commanded them, died with them ; 
and the German Crusaders who were left — few indeed 
after the struggle — returned to Germany before the close 
of the Crusade under Duke Leopold of Austria. 



112 The Eaidy Plantagenets. a.d. 1190. 

Next perhaps, after the Emperor, the Crusade de- 
pended on the King of Sicily — he died four months after 
his father-in-law, Henry II. 

For two years the siege of Acre dragged on its miser- 
able length. It was a siege within a siege : the Christian 
^ j^j^ host held the Saracen army within the walls ; 

siege at they thcmselves fortified an entrenched camp ; 

^^^' outside the trench was a countless Saracen 

host besieging the besiegers. The command of the sea 
was disputed, but both parties found their supplies in 
that way, and both suffered together. 

This had been going on for nearly a year before 
Richard and Philip left Vezelai. From Vezelai to Lyons 
Journey of the kings marched together ; then Philip set 
Richard. Qut for Genoa, Richard for Marseilles. Rich- 
ard coasted along the Italian shore, wiling away the time 
until his fleet arrived. The ships had gone, of course, 
by the Bay of Biscay and Straits of Gibraltar, where 
they had been drawn into the constant crusade going 
on between the Moors and the Portuguese, and lost time 
also by sailing up to Marseilles, where they expected to 
meet the king. Notwithstanding the delay they arrived 
at Messina several days before Richard. Phihp, whose 
fleet, such as it was, had assembled at Marseilles, reached 
the place of rendezvous ten days before him. 

Immediately on Richard's arrival, on September 23, 
Phihp took ship, but as immediately put back. Richard 
The English made no attempt to go farther than Messina 
at Acre. ^^til the Spring. It was an unfortunate delay, 

but it was absolutely necessary. The besiegers of Acre 
were perishing with plague and famine; provisions were 
not abundant even in the fleet. To have added - the 
Enghsh and French armies to the perishing host would 
have been suicidal. Some of the English barons, how- 
ever, persisted. Ranulf Glanvill went on to Acre, and 



A.D. iigi. Richard Cceiir de Lioii. 113 

died in the autumn of 1190; Archbishop Baldwin and 
Hubert Walter, the Bishop of Salisbury, took the mili- 
tary as well as the spiritual command of the English 
contingent ; but the archbishop died in November, and 
Hubert found his chief employment in ministering to the 
starving soldiers. Queen Sibylla and her children were 
dead also ; and Conrad of Montferrat, separating her 
sister, now the heiress of the Frank kingdom, from her 
youthful husband, prevailed on the patriarch to marry 
her to himself, and so to oust King Guy, and still 
more divide the divided camp. The two factions were 
arrayed against one another as bitterly as the general 
exhaustion permitted, when at last Philip and Richard 
came. 

The winter months of 1 190 and the spring of 1 191 had 
been spent by them in very uneasy lodgings at Messina. 
Richard and Philip were, from the very first, xhe kings 
jealous of one another. Richard was betrothed ^'^ Messma. 
to Philip's sister, and Philip suspected him of wishing to 
break off the engagement. Richard's sister Johanna, the 
widow of William the Good, was still in Sicily. Richard 
wanted to get her and her fortune into his hands and out 
of the hands of Tancred, who, with a doubtful claim, had 
set himself up as King of Sicily against Henry of Hohen- 
staufen, who had married the late king's aunt. Now, the 
Hohenstaufen and the French had always been allies ; 
Richard, through his sister's marriage with Henry the Lion, 
was closely connected with the Welfs, who had suffered 
forfeiture and banishment from the policy of Frederick 
Barbarossa. He was also naturally the ally of Tan- 
cred, who looked upon him as the head of Richard and 
Norman chivalry. Yet to secure his sister he Tancred. 
found it necessary to force Tancred to terms. Whilst 
Tancred negotiated the people of Messina rose against 
the strangers ; the strangers quarrelled among them- 
M. H. I 



1 14 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1191. 

selves; Philip planned treachery against Richard, and 
tried to draw Tancred into a conspiracy; Tancred in- 
formed Richard of the treachery. Matters were within 
a hair's breadth of a battle between the crusading kings. 
Philip's strength, however, was not equal to his spite, 
and the air gradually cleared. Tancred gave up the 
queen and her fortune, and arranged a marriage for one 
of his daughters with Arthur of Brittany, who was re- 
cognised as Richard's heir. Soon after Queen Eleanor 
arrived at Naples with the lady Berengaria of Navarre 
in her company; whereupon, by the advice of Count 
Philip of Flanders, Philip released Richard from the 
promise to marry his sister ; and at last, at the end of 
March 1191, the French Crusaders sailed away to Acre. 
Richard Richard followed in a few days ; but a storm 

sails from carrying part of his fleet to Cyprus, he found 
himself obliged to fight with Isaac Comnenus, 
the Emperor, and then to conquer and reform the island, 
where also he was married. After he reached Acre, where 
he arrived on June 8, he as well as Philip fell ill, and 
only after a delay of some weeks was able to take part in 
Acre taken, the sicge. The town held out a little longer; 
1 191, ]3^^ early in July it surrendered, and gave the 

Christians once more a footing in the Holy Land. Im- 
mediately after the capture Philip started homewards, 
leaving his vow of pilgrimage unfulfilled. Richard re- 
mained to complete the conquest. 

The sufferings and the cruelties of this part of the 
history are not pleasant to dwell upon. It is a sad tale 
„.. , ,, to tell how Saladin slew his prisoners, how 
campaigns the Duke of Burgundy and Richard slew 
theirs ; how Conrad and Guy quarrelled, the 
French supporting Conrad and Richard supporting Guy ; 
how the people perished, and brave and noble knights 
took menial service to earn bread, A more brilliant yet 



A.D. II92. Richard C(BiLr de Lion. 115 

scarcely less sad story is the great march of Richard by 
the way of the sea from Acre to Joppa, and his progress, 
after a stay of seven weeks at Joppa, on the way to Jeru- 
salem as far as Ramlah. Every step was dogged by 
Saladin, every straggler cut off, every place of encamp- 
ment won by fighting. Christmas found the king within 
a few miles of Jerusalem; but he never came within 
reach of it. Had he known the internal condition of the 
city he might have taken it. Jerusalem was in a panic, 
Saladin for once paralysed by alarm; but Richard had 
no good intelligence. The Franks insisted that Ascalon 
should be secured before the Holy City was occupied. 
The favourable moment passed away. 

Richard with a heavy heart turned his back on Jeru- 
salem and went to rebuild Ascalon. Before Ascalon 
that was done the French began to draw back, rebuilt. 
The struggle between Guy and Conrad broke out again. 
Saladin, by Easter 1192, was in full force and in good 
spirits again. Richard performed during these months 
some of the most daring exploits of his whole Exploits of 
life : capturing the fortresses of the south Richard. 
country of Judah, and with a small force and incredibh'- 
rapid movements intercepting the great caravan of the 
Saracens on the borders of the desert. Such acts in- 
creased his fame but scarcely helped the Crusade. 

In June it became absolutely necessary to determine 
on further steps. Now the French insisted on attacking 
Jerusalem. Richard had learned caution, and the council 
of the Crusade recommended an expedition to Egypt 
to secure the south as Acre barred the north. At last 
Richard yielded to the pressure of the French, March on 
and in spite of the want of water and the ab- Jerusalem. 
surdity of sitting down before the Holy City with an 
enormous army in the middle of summer, he led them 
again to Beit-nuba, four hours' journey from Jerusalem. 



Ii6 The Early Plaiitagenets. a.d. 1193. 

Then the French changed their minds again ; and thence, 
on July 4, began the retreat preparatory to the return. 
Richard had been too long away from France, whither 
Philip had returned, and from England, where John was 
Retreat and waiting for his chanccs ; he began to negotiate 
truce. fQj- a, truce, and in September, after a dashing 

exploit at Joppa, in which he rescued the town from 
almost certain capture, he arranged a peace for three 
years three months and three days. 

Early in October he left Palestine, the Bishop of 
Sahsbury remaining to lead home the remnant of the 
^. , „ host, as soon as they had performed the pil- 

Ricnard s ' • , , i ^ \ 

journey grimage which they were to make under the 

homewards, pj-ote^tion of Saladin. Richard, impatient of 
delay, and not deeming himself worthy to look on the 
city which he had not strength and grace to win back for 
Christendom, left his fleet and committed himself to 
the ordinary means of transport. After bargaining with 
pirates and smugglers for a passage, and losing time by 
unnecessary hurry, he was shipwrecked on the coast of 
the Adriatic near Aquileia; travelled in disguise through 
Friuli and part of Salzburg, and was caught by Duke 
Leopold of Austria, his bitter personal enemy, at Vienna, 
in December. In March 1193 he was handed over to 
the Emperor Henry VI., who was in correspondence with 
Philip of France, as Philip was with John. For more 
than a year Richard was in captivity. We may take the 
opportunity of turning back and seeing how England had 
fared during his absence. 

When he started on the Crusade, early in December 
1 189, he left the regency in the hands of Bishop Hugh 
' , , of Durham and Bishop William of Ely the 

England ^ . ^ . 

during the Chancellor, with a committee of associate 
Crusade. justices, John and Geoffrey had sworn to 
stay away for three years. As soon as he was out of the 



A.D. 1 1 90. RicJiard Cq^ilv de Lion. 117 

country, as early as January 1190, the justices quarrelled. 
They were, indeed, very ill-mated. Hugh de Puiset, the 
Bishop of Durham, was a great lord of the Hugh de 
house of Champagne, nephew to King Ste- P^iset. 
phen, and cousin to the king : a rich man, an old man, 
the father of a fine family, one son being chancellor to 
the King of France ; a great captain, a great hunter, a 
most splendid builder ; not a very clerical character, but 
altogether a grand figure for nearly fifty years of English 
history, William of Longchamp, although per- -yy^juj^jj^ 
haps, notwithstanding the stigma of low birth Long- 
cast upon him by his rivals, a man of good ^ ^™^' 
family, was an upstart by the side of Bishop Hugh. He 
was a man of very unpopular manners ; very ambitious 
for himself and his relations, very arrogant, priding him- 
self on his Norman blood, but laughed at as a parvejiti 
by the Norman nobles; disliking and showing contempt 
in the coarsest way for the English, whose language he 
would not speak and declared that he did not under- 
stand; very jealous of a sharer in power, and unscru- 
pulous in his use of it. With all this, however, he was, 
it is certain, faithful to Richard; his designs were all 
directed to the securing and increasing of his master's 
power, and his bitterest enemies were his master's 
enemies. Richard knew this, and never discarded his 
minister, although his unpopularity once endangered 
the throne, and was always so great that he thought 
it best to keep him out of the country. He continued 
to be chancellor as long as he lived. William, as the 
king's confidant, chancellor, justicia,r, and prospective 
legate, was far more than a match for Bishop Hugh. 
They quarrelled at the Exchequer as soon Quarrel of 
as Richard left for France. The chancellor the justices. 
crossed over and laid his complaint before the king ; 
then Hugh followed, and obtained a favourable answer ; 



Ii8 The Early Plantageiiets. a.d. 1190. 

but when he presented the royal letters to Longchamp 
he was arrested and kept in honourable confinement until 
the king's pleasure should be further known. Richard 
was probably aware of this summary treatment of the 
bishop, but he had extracted from his coffers as much of 
his treasure as he was likely for the present to get, and 
he practically rewarded the chancellor by showing him 
increased confidence. In June Longchamp became 
legate of the pope and sole justiciar. 

After Hugh de Puiset's defeat Longchamp had several 
months of practical sovereignty ; supreme in Church and 
Longchamp State, he travelled about in royal pomp, 
supreme. making double exactions, as chancellor and 
legate, from the religious houses. He fortified the Tower 
of London. He punished the rioters at York who had 
attacked the Jews and driven them to destroy themselves. 
He put his own brothers into high and lucrative posts, 
married his nephews and nieces to the great wards of the 
crown, taught the noble pages of his household to serve 
on the knee, and, partly by misconduct, partly by mis- 
management and contumelious behaviour in general, did 
his best to make himself intolerable. 

By this time John was released from the oath to stay 
three years on the Continent and had come to England, 
Position of where he was keeping royal state in his castles 
John. Qf Marlborough and Lancaster, John's posi- 

tion, if not his ability, made him a more formidable an- 
tagonist than Bishop Hugh de Puiset, and John's enmity 
was no doubt first incurred by the support which Long- 
champ gave to the idea that Arthur should be Richard's 
heir. Whether Richard really intended Arthur to suc- 
ceed, or merely allowed him to be set up as a check upon 
John, cannot perhaps be certainly decided ; but he was 
so set up, and Longchamp's policy was, for a time, de- 
voted to the securing of his claim. For a time John 



A. D. 1 191. RicJiard CceiLT de Lion. 119 

remained quiet, angry at not having his proper share of 
power, but restrained by the presence, and probably by 
the advice, of Eleanor, his mother, who certainly never 
intended that Arthur should exclude him from the throne. 
Eleanor, however, early in 1191, went to Messina with 
Berengaria of Navarre, and probably with the express 
purpose of laying before her son the imprudent behaviour 
of his chancellor. John was thus released from her influ- 
ence, and in a very short time found an opportunity of 
asserting himself as the protector of the nation against 
the tyranny of Longchamp. 

The Chancellor, in pursuance of a deliberate plan for 
maintaining the royal power, was engaged in taking into 
his own hands the many castles which since Longchamp 
the death of Henry II. had got into untrust- fh^eTo""^! 
worthy keeping. The importance of this castles. 
measure, sufficiently clear from the history of the two 
last reigns, justified some severity. Yet action so speedy 
and direct could scarcely have been expected by men 
who had only a year and a half before paid down large 
sums of money to Richard for the possessions of which 
they were now deprived. John knew this ; he knew that 
he had himself been kept out of the castles belonging to 
the lordships which were showered upon him, and deter- 
mined to avail himself of the first chance to set matters 
right and to obtain recognition as his brother's heir. So 
whilst Longchamp was busy in the West of England John 
took measures for securing the castles of 'I'ickhill and 
Nottingham, the two strongest fortresses to which he 
thought he had a claim. The chance soon came. 

Gerard Camvill, the warden of Lincoln Castle and 
sheriff qf the ahire, refused to surrender his fortress at 
the command of Longchamp, and appealed to Gerard 
John as his liege lord. John took up arms Camvill. 
and seized Nottingham and Tickhill. The Chancellor 



120 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1191. 

went northwards to meet him, but no battle was fought ; 
War and and a truce was made at Winchester towards 
truces. the end of April 1 191. This lasted but a short 

time. Soon after the pacification, about midsummer, war 
broke out again ; again the castles were surrendered to 
John, and a battle was imminent. But now a new actor 
appeared. Richard, hearing from his mother of the angry 
Mission of ^^^^^ °^ ^^^ kingdom, sent from Messina the 
Waiter of Archbishop of Rouen, Walter of Coutances, 
an old officer of the English court who had 
been Vice-Chancellor to Henry 11, , with instructions 
of which we have no very certain account, but which 
probably contained two or three alternative courses, one 
of which was the superseding of Longchamp. Just at the 
same time Clement III. died, and it was very uncertain 
whether Celestine III., who succeeded him, would renew 
the legatine commission. The Archbishop of Rouen 
arrived in time to prevent bloodshed; but he did not 
produce his summary instructions. A second truce was 
made at Winchester in July, and the castles both of the 
king and of John were placed in safe hands. 

Two months had scarcely passed when a third struggle 
occurred. Archbishop Geoffrey of York, released, as he 
Return of Said, like John, from his three years' exile, 
Archbishop returned from his consecration at Tours, and 
^^^' landed at Dover in September. The Chan- 
cellor, fearful of his influence and afraid of his coalescing 
with John, tried to prevent his landing. The new arch- 
bishop was sacrilegiously handled by the legate's ser- 
vants, drawn from sanctuary and imprisoned. John took 
up at once his brother's cause, and the bishops and 
barons, indignant that a son of the great King Henry 
should be so treated, compelled the Chancellor to dis- 
avow the act and release the prisoner. Geoffrey, set free, 
went at once to London. John and the Archbishop of 



A.D. 1 192. Richard Cceitr de Lion. 121 

Rouen collected the barons, and Longchamp shut himself 
up at Windsor. The barons cried out for his deposition, 
the bishops for his excommunication. Scarcely any of 
the many friends whom he had purchased Lono-champ 
stood by him. It was at last agreed that he removed 
should meet the whole body of the baronage justidar- 
at the bridge over the Loddon near Reading, ^^^p- 
early in October. The barons met there. Longchamp's 
courage failed him; instead of keeping his appointment 
he started at full speed to London. When he arrived 
there he found that his friends were a minority among 
the citizens, and took refuge in the Tower. No sooner 
was he there than John and the barons came at full speed 
after him. The next day they held a solemn assembly. 
The Archbishop of Rouen at last exhibited his commis- 
sion and was received as Justiciar. John was recognised 
as his brother's representative. Longchamp was com- 
pelled to surrender his castles and go into exile. This 
would seem to have been a case of revolutionary action, 
rather than of the constitutional dismissal of a minister ; 
still it is important in its relation to the theory of the 
responsibility of ministers, and as containing in germ the 
idea that an unworthy minister is amenable to punish- 
ment and deposition at the hands of the nation, and is 
not responsible to his master only. 

Before Christmas King Philip had returned from the 
Crusade and was laying snares for Richard, who was still 
bearing the burden of Christendom in Pales- ^ - 

° Intnsjues of 

tine. The first net was spread for John. John Philip and 
was very much disgusted that the Archbishop ' ^^^^' 

of Rouen had secured all the benefits of the late victory 
over the Chancellor and indignant at being kept in order 
by his mother. He was ready enough to betray Richard's 
interests ; he intrigued first with Philip, then with Long- 
champ, who wanted to return to his see; he accepted 



122 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1193. 

bribes in money from both. The whole year 1192 affords 
nothing but a record of his machinations, which were for 
the present futile. But when the news of the capture of 
Richard at Vienna arrived he immediately entered into 
negotiations with Philip, bond fide on both sides, to secure 
the crown to himself and to prevent his brother's return. 
These manoeuvres resulted in open war as soon as the 
release of Richard w^as determined on. 

We must now return to the fortunes of the captive 
king, the news of whose imprisonment took all Europe 
Negotia- by Surprise and shocked all Christendom. It 
Richard's reached England in February 1193; and the 
release. first thing the Justiciar did was to send two 

abbots to Germany to seek him. They met him at 
Ochsenfurth, in Bavaria, on his way to Worms, where he 
was to meet the Emperor on Palm Sunday. Their first 
negotiations were friendly enough, notwithstanding the 
alhance .which Richard had made with Tancred, and his 
connexion with the Welfic family. An enormous ransom 
was demanded, but Richard was to have no inconsider- 
able gift in compensation, that little Proven9al kingdom 
which Frederick had been able to reclaim, but over 
which Henry possessed scarcely more than nominal sway. 
Richard was to be made King of Aries. In the mean- 
time he was to resign the crown of England to Henry 
VI. as lord of the world, and to receive it back again as 
a tributary fief of the empire; and this, our historian 
says, was done, although the Emperor before his death 
released him from the obligation. 

But as soon as Philip and John learned that the 
transaction was assuming such an amicable shape, they 
attempted to prevent the Emperor from fulfil- 
ling the agreement, and the position of parties 
within the empire gave them fair hopes of attaining 
their end. For, in consequence of the murder of the 



A. D. 1 1 94- Richard Cceiir de Lion. 123 

Bishop of Liege^ in which the Emperor was somehow 
imphcated, Henry was at open strife with the great barons 
and lords of the Low Countries. They hampered his 
action in his wide-reaching schemes of pohcy; against 
them he felt the need of having Philip's aid, and he 
listened to the overtures of Richard's enemies. 

John, having so far succeeded in retarding opera- 
tions, secured his castles, and added even Windsor to 
their number; he gave out that Richard would Rebellion of 
never return ; and although he professed to J°^"- 
collect money for the ransom, collected all that he could 
in his own treasury. Eleanor, however, and the justices, 
were too strong for him. Hubert Walter too had returned 
from Palestine ; he, in company with the Chancellor, had 
visited Richard in his prison, and had by his recommend- 
ation been chosen archbishop of Canterbury. He under- 
took to raise the ransom, and to manage John. Richard's 
The whole nation behaved nobly. Enormous J^^nsom. 
contributions were raised; the knights paid a scutage in 
aid to ransom their lord; the Cistercians surrendered 
their wool ; the whole people paid a fourth of their move- 
able goods, clergy as well as lay. Whether all the money 
that was raised reached the Emperors coffers may fairly 
be doubted, but the nation paid it, and at last by Feb- 
ruary 1 1 94 the ransom was ready. 

But before Richard was set free it was found neces- 
sary to buy the help of the lords of the Low Countries, 
and compel Henry to fulfil his promise by Release; 
threats that they would renounce their alle- ^^94- 
giance. He had defied the Pope, and indeed died ex- 
communicate, but he could not stand against this pres- 
sure. Richard was released, and landed in England on 
the i3tli of March. 

England the returning hero found at war. Archbishop 
Hubert, who had succeeded to the justiciarship at Christ- 



124 The Ecwly Plaiitageiiets. a.d. 1194. 

mas, had been obliged to look John's treason in the face. 
As archbishop he excommunicated him : as 

Return. .., ^- ,.. r r • 

justice he condemned him to forfeiture; as 
lieutenant-general of the king he led an army against 
him. One by one John's castles had been taken, and at 
the time of Richard's landing only Tickhill and Not- 
tingham held out. Tickhill surrendered on hearing the 
news, Nottingham at the arrival of the king. John's 
party at once broke up, and Richard had but to show 
himself to be supreme. 

This is Richard's second and last appearance on 
English soil as king. He stayed only from March 13 
to May 12, 1 1 94, but he did a great deal of 
second visit busincss. As soon as Nottingham had surren- 
to ng an . (^gj-g(j ]^g called a great council there, and for 
three days acted as chief judge, financier, and politician ; 
taxing his friends, condemning his enemies, and concoct- 
ing new plans for the security and quiet administration 
of the realm. By selling sheriffdoms, exacting fines, and 
enacting taxes, he raised money to begin hostilities with 
Phihp at once. He punished the enemies of Longchamp 
and the friends of John, especially his chief minister, 
Hugh of Nunant, Bishop of Coventry, who had as bishop 
and as sheriff offended the laws secular and ecclesias- 
tical. But he showed himself by no means implacable ; 
and, before he left, he had reconciled not only Arch- 
bishop Geoffrey and the Chancellor, but almost all the 
other jealous and divided parties. In accordance with the 
recommendation of his council, before he left England, 
he wore his crown in solemn state at Winchester; and, 
having done fairly well all that he had undertaken, show- 
ing that his pride, dignity, and energy had undergone 
no diminution by his captivity, he sailed to Barfleur on the 
1 2th of May, and England saw his face no more, heavily 
as from time to time she felt the pressure of his hand. 



A.D. 1 194-8. RicJiard Coeur de Lion. 125 

From this time all Richard's personal history is un- 
comiected with England. From 1194 to 11 98 the king- 
dom was governed by Hubert Walter, the „ • 
Archbishop of Canterbury, who, like Long- of Hubert i^ 
champ, was both legate and justiciar ; Long- ^^^'^'^• 
champ retained the title and emoluments of chancellor, 
but did not come to England. The history of these 
years is simply a record of judicial and financial mea- 
sures taken on the lines and inspired by the motives 
of Henry the Second's policy. H ubert had been his 
secretary, and, being the nephew of Ranulf Glanvill, 
he had been fitted by education to be a sound lawyer 
and financier, as well as a good bishop and a suc- 
cessful general. He was a strong minister; and al- 
though as a good Enghshman he made the pressure 
of his master's hand lie as lightly as he could upon 
the people, as a good servant he tried to get out of the 
people as much treasure as he could for his master. In 
the raising of the money and in the administration of jus- 
tice he tried and did much to train the people to habits of 
self-government. He taught them how to assess their taxes 
by jury, to elect the grand jury for the assizes of the 
judges, to choose representative knights to transact legal 
and judicial work ; — such representative knights as at a 
later time made convenient precedents for parliamentary 
representation. The whole working of elective and re- 
presentative institutions gained greatly under his man- 
agement—he educated the people against the better time 
to come. But he collected vast sums — eleven hundred 
thousand pounds, it was said, in four years — beyond the 
ordinary revenue. He allowed no evasions. The king 
watched him closely ; threatened reforms which would 
increase the exactions of the treasury, and directed the 
formation of a new national survey, or at least tried to 
force one on the country. The people of London, worked 



126 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1198. 

on by the demagogue William FitzOsbert, insisted on a 
new mode of assessment in which the taxes would be 
collected in proportion to the means of the payers, 
and not by a simple poll-tax. This project might be just, 
but was promoted by revolutionary means ; Hubert sum- 
marily cowed the rioters into submission. He went to 
the very extreme of what was right to serve Richard, 
and at last he gave in to the number of influences which 
combined to weary him of a position of power too great 
to be undertaken by any single person. 

This occasion is a memorable one. In the spring of 
1 198 Richard, as usual, wanted money, and had ex- 
Monev hausted all the usual means of procuring it. 

refused by He accordingly directed Hubert to propose 

the Great . , v i , i i • i i 

Council, to the assembled barons and bishops that 

1 198. ^j^gy should maintain for him, during his war, 

a force of three hundred knights, to be paid a sum of 
three shillings a day. To the archbishop's amazement, 
for the first time for five-and-thirty years, for the second 
time in English history, the demand was disputed. Again 
the opposition was led by a bishop, as then by St. 
Thomas, this time by St, Hugh. That great Hugh of 
Lincoln, the Burgundian Carthusian who had won the 
heart of Henry H. and had treated him as an equal, 
now acted on behalf of the nation to which he had joined 
himself. Herbert, the Bishop of Salisbury, the son of 
Henry's old servant Richard of Ilchester, followed the 
example. The estates of their churches were not bound, 
they said, to afford the king military service except within 
the four seas ; they would not furnish it for foreign war- 
fare. The opposition prevailed : the bishops had struck 
a chord which awoke the baronage. This body now, to 
a far greater extent than before, consisted of men who 
had little interest in Normandy, were far more English 
in sympathy, and perhaps also in blood, than they had 



A. D. 1 198. Richard Coeitr de Lion. 127 

been under Henry 11. The occasion is marked by 
another consequence. The s^reat minister re- „ . 

, , 1 , . Resignation 

Signed — not perhaps merely on this account — of the jus- 
he had long been weary of his office ; the new ^^'^^^^' 
Pope, Innocent III., was telhng him that it was unworthy 
of an archbishop to act as a secular judge and task- 
m.aster. The monks of his cathedral were harassing- 
him about the sacrilege involved in the execution of 
William FitzOsbert, whom he had ordered to be taken 
from sanctuary and hanged; and the Roman lawyers 
were threatening excommunication if he did not pull 
down the grand new college which he had built in honour 
of St. Thomas at Lambeth. He had had as much as 
he wanted of power, and as much as he could bear of 
blame. He therefore, in July 1198, made way for a new 
justiciar, Geoffrey FitzPeter, Earl of Essex, Geoffrey 
who had no such scruples of conscience and FitzPeter., 
no such ecclesiastical embarrassments, but who began 
his administration with a severe forest assize, and by his 
general sternness taught the nation how good a friend, 
with all his shortcomings. Archbishop Hubert had been. 
Geoffrey FitzPeter retained his office for life, dying, as 
will be seen, at a critical period in the next reign. 

During this time Richard was engaged in foiling 
the projects of Philip, and drawing together the strings 
of a great Continental alliance against him. Richard's 
Alternate interviews, battles, treaties or pro- ^^^^ y^^''^- 
jects of treaties, truces and truce-breakings, form the 
history of years, interesting only to those who care to 
follow the mihtary and geographical side of the history. 
Phihp gains strength on the whole ; it would not be true 
to say that Richard loses strength, and he would pro- 
bably, if he had lived, have completely overwhelmed his 
enemy. But still they were more on an equality than 
they had been ; Philip gaining experience which was far 



128 The Early Plant age7iets. a.d 1109. 

more valuable to him than any mere access of force. 
In 1 198 Richard made a great step, by securing the crown 
of Germany for his nephew, the son of Henry 
Saxony, the Lion of Saxony, who had been brought 

emperor. ^^ ^^ ^^ English court, and was, of course, 
in the closest alliance with his benefactor. With Otho's 
aid he drew in all the Flemish nobles and the Low 
Country Germans, who hated the Hohenstaufen, and so 
hated their ally the King of France not only as a bad 
neighbour but as an ally of the Emperor. This confede- 
ration might ultimately have been successful if Richard 
had lived to guide it. He had at last by patient and for- 
giving kindness drawn John from Philip's side ; he had 
got the King of Scots also safe under his influence. 

In the spring of 1199 he was, as usual, in appear- 
ance negotiating a peace, probably in reality meditating 
■p , f a brisker war, when he heard that the Viscount 
Richard, of Limoges had found a great buried treasure : 
^^^^' a golden emperor and all his court sitting at 

a golden table. The very name of the gold aroused 
Richard : he demanded his share— the lion's share. The 
viscount gave, but not all. So the king besieged his 
castles ; and before one of them, Chalus-Chabrol, he re- 
ceived a wound in the shoulder, which the awkwardness 
of the surgeons made mortal to him. He lived long 
enough to set his house in order. He left his jewels to 
Otho ; John he declared his heir, and directed the barons 
to swear allegiance to him ; he sent for his mother to 
receive his last words ; he ordered the man who had 
wounded him to be set free, and declared his forgive- 
ness of all his enemies. Then in an agony of penitence 
he made a very solemn and very sad confession. It was 
said that he had not confessed for seven years, because 
he would not profess to be reconciled to Philip ; and he 
had much besides that to ask pardon for. After re- 



A. D. 1 1 99- Richard Cceur de Lion. 129 

ceiving the last sacraments he closed his laborious life 
on the 7th of April, and was buried with his father, by 
St. Hugh of Lincoln, in the abbey church of Fontev- 
raud; a very strong man, who knew at last his own 
need of mercy. 



CHAPTER VII. 

JOHN. 

John's succession — Arthur's claim's — Loss of Normandy — Quarrel 
with the Church- Submission to the Pope — Quarrel with the 
Barons — The Great Charter and its consequences — Arrival of 
Lewis — John's death. 

The death of Richard placed John at last in the position 
for which he had toiled and intrigued so long ; not, it 
is true, without a competitor, and that one john and 
whose claims were destined, after his own Arthur. 
death, to be fatal to John's retention of half his posses- 
sions. But the competitor was for the moment in the 
background, and in England at least never gained a foot- 
ing or gathered the semblance of a party. Arthur was 
now twelve years old ; his mother, Constance of Brittany, 
who was left a widow before he was born, had been mar- 
ried in the year of his birth to Earl Ranulf of Chester, 
whom she disliked, and who, after having been married 
to her for some years, found himself unable to manage 
her, and, following the example of Henry XL, imprisoned 
her. She was an imprudent, probably a bad woman, as 
her later conduct tends to show; but it may be questioned 
whether, in her management of her hereditary state of 
Brittany, she went farther than any good patriot might 
go in opposition to the centralising policy by which 
Richard carried out the schemes of his father. Anyhow 
she had made herself the champion of the independence 

M. H. K 



130 The Early Pla7itage7iets. a.d. 1199. 

of Brittany, and so had imperilled the chances of her 
son's succession to the rest of the inheritance. She 
seems to have been in constant opposition to Richard, 
and likewise to Eleanor, who alone after Richard's death 
could have maintained Arthur's rights. It is probably 
for this reason that, after Richard returned from the Cru- 
sade, we never again hear of Arthur as heir ; that John 
therefore, although personally disliked, was accepted as 
an inevitable necessity; and that Arthur, when he was 
old enough to act for himself, ruined his own cause by 
his wanton attack upon his grandmother, 

John seems to have known that England was safely 
his own. He had bound the baronage by oath to agree 
^ , to his succession as early as 1191 ; he had 

secures a faithful friend in the Archbishop of Can- 

orman y. ^-gj-i^^j-y^ ^]-^q transferred to him the devotion 
which he had always shown to Richard, and had con- 
sented to become his chancellor. He was willing to make 
any sort of promises to secure those of the magnates 
who were not already pledged to him. He spent, there- 
fore, the first six weeks of his reign in France, making 
good his hold on Normandy, and providing for the main- 
tenance of peace with Philip. Meanwhile he sent the 
archbishop to England, to smooth his way there and 
prepare for the coronation. 

The difficulties which Hubert had to encounter were 
not caused by the question of the succession, but by the 
Parties in attitude of the great earls, all of whom had 
England. something to gain by the possible reversal of 
that repressive policy which had been pursued for the 
last twenty-six years, and some of whom had on former 
occasions taken a leading part against John, which he 
might now embrace the opportunity of avenging, A 
reactionary feudal party, a party of personal opponents, 
and a body of ambitious self-seekers, might all together, 



A.D. 1 199. 



John. 1 3 1 



if they had taken up Arthur's cause, have given John 
much trouble ; but they contented themselves, as it was, 
with stating their grievances, and the archbishop was 
empowered to make any concessions that would appease 
them. The state of the country was not so peaceful as 
it had been during the last interregnum. The disturbers 
of public order took advantage of the attitude of the 
earls to plunder and ravage ; but the strong arm of the 
justiciar avenged what he could not prevent, and, after 
a formal debate held between Hubert and the earls at 
Northampton, peace was restored and the promises of 
John accepted as conclusive at all events for the present. 
On Ascension-day accordingly he presented himself 
at Westminster, and was there chosen, anointed, and 
consecrated with great splendour. On this John's 
occasion the ancient doctrine of election to coronation. 
the crown was vindicated in word and deed. Matthew 
Paris, the historian of this and the next reign, a writer 
who hated John with inveterate hatred, and who has 
therefore been suspected of having inserted in his work 
some things which never took place, has put in the 
mouth of the archbishop a somewhat elaborate speech, 
in which he declares that the crown of England is 
elective rather than hereditary, and" that John's title to 
the succession lies in the fact that he has been chosen 
king, as the first and strongest and most famous of the 
royal house. That some declaration of the kind was 
made is certain, for it is quoted by Lewis of France 
in the manifesto issued when he landed in England in 
1216; but the historian draws suspicion upon his own 
account of it by saying that Hubert had a prophetic fore- 
sight in doing this ; that he foresaw John's misrule and 
insisted on his elective title as one that might be set aside 
hereafter. But in whatever terms the fact of the election 
was stated, and whether the claim of Arthur was denied 



132 The Early Plantagenets, a.d. 1199. 

or passed over in silence, it is important as showing the 
accepted doctrine of election in the thirteenth century. 
Arthur, according to the principles of inheritance of fiefs, 
as they were now admitted in England, was clearly his 
uncle's heir. The election of John was, and perhaps was 
understood to be, a recurrence to the older rule by which 
the national choice of a king was directed to the ablest 
or eldest or most prominent member of the royal house. 

Although we have a detailed account of John's coro- 
nation we find no mention of a charter, such as Henry II. 
Coronation ^ind Stephen had issued. Richard had not 
oath. issued one, but had contented himself with 

the three strong promises included in the coronation 
oath — to defend the Church, to maintain justice, and to 
make good laws, abohshing evil customs. John did the 
same ; and, as the oath was again required of him after 
his reconciliation with Langton in 12 13, we may with- 
out hesitation infer that no charter was granted at the 
coronation. 

The history of John's reign may conveniently be 
arranged in three divisions, which fall into a nearly 
. ^ chronological sequence ; first, the foreign re- 

ment of the lations, including the war with Philip, the fate 
c apter. ^^ Arthur, and the loss of Normandy; se- 

condly, the dispute with the clergy, and the interdict and 
submission to Rome ; and thirdly, the events that led to 
and flowed from the granting of Magna Carta. In each 
of these divisions of our period we find certain persons 
coming to the front as the mainstay of John's power, 
at whose death that power, in one region or another, 
seems at once to suffer collapse. Of these the first is his 
Queen mother, the great source and prop of his Con- 

Eleanor, tinental position. Of her character enough 
has been said already ; her better points come out most 
strongly in her old age, when we see her, between 



A.D. 1 199. 



John. 133 



seventy and eighty years old, running about from one 
end of Europe to another to patch up truces, to make 
peaces, and to close wars which sprang mainly out of 
her own levity and intriguing of half a century past. 
She had engaged in a lifelong quarrel with her first 
husband in 11 50, and with her second in 11 73; now 
in 1200 she fetches a granddaughter of the second to 
marry the grandson of the first, as a pledge of harmony 
between the sons of the two. John's fortunes are not 
wholly hopeless until he loses his mother. 

Richard's unexpected death occurred during a nego- 
tiation for peace with Philip ; and John succeeded at once, 
just as Richard himself had done, to the whole Arthur's 
accumulation of dynastic and territorial griev- claims in 
ances, which had been mounting up for fifty 
years ; with the addition of Arthur's claims, which gave 
Philip the opportunity of interfering in every possible 
question. Before the coronation these claims had been 
raised; Philip had determined to be beforehand, and had 
seized the city of Evreux on the receipt of the news of 
Richard's death. At the same moment the barons of 
Anjou, Maine, and Touraine had declared Arthur their 
count, and Constance had delivered him bodily into 
Philip's keeping. John, in revenge for this, had destroyed 
the walls and imprisoned the citizens of le Mans_, which 
he regarded as the stronghold of Arthur's party. He re- 
turned to Normandy directly after the coronation, on June 
20, and made a truce with Philip for two months, during 
which Philip accepted Arthur's homage for all the Con- 
tinental estates of the family and constituted himself his 
champion. Immediately on the expiration of the truce 
the kings met again, and Phihp then proposed by way 
of compromise that John should retain Normandy, and 
Arthur have the remaining states, Philip himself receiv- 
ing the Vexin as a remuneration for his good offices in 



134 TJie Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1200, 

thus arbitrating. John refused this, and war broke out 
again, in which Phihp showed himself so much more 
anxious for his own interest than for Arthur's that the 
unhappy boy allowed himself to be removed from Philip's 
protection and placed under John's. He discovered his 
mistake, however, almost instantly, and fled from his 
uncle's court to Angers, in company with his mother, 
who took the opportunity of finally breaking with the 
Earl of Chester, and, without waiting for a divorce, 
bestowed herself in marriage on Guy, a brother of the 
Viscount of Thouars. 

Upon this John and Phihp made a fresh truce which 
grew into a peace, by which Arthur's interests were 
Peace finally sacrificed, and which was cemented by 

between ^j^g marriage of Blanche of Castille, John's 

John and ° . -^ . 

Philip, 1200. niece, to Lewis, the son and heir of Phihp. 
This was accomphshed in May 1200. Philip's matri- 
monial difficulties, which arose from his wanton repudia- 
tion of his second wife, Ingeburga of Denmark, exposed 
him at the time to a threat of interdict, and he probably 
thought it wise not to have both John and Innocent III. 
arrayed against him at once. John, seeing the marriage 
laws practically in abeyance, had taken advantage of the 
objection which had been raised by Archbishop Baldwin 
to his marriage, and released himself from his wife, 
John's Hawisia of Gloucester, on the ground of re- 

marriage, lationship. Now, inspired either by love or 
territorial covetousness, he married Isabella, the child- 
heiress of the Count of Angouleme. This marriage 
offended, on the one side of the Channel, Hugh of la 
Marche, who was betrothed to her, and on the other side 
the great kinsmen of the house of Gloucester, and the 
lady Hawisia herself, who subsequently married Geoffrey 
de Mandeville, one of the bitterest of John's enemies. 
The peace did not last longer than Phihp's domestic 



A.D. I20I-5. 



John. 135 



difficulties, which came to an end on his consenting to 
receive back Ingeburga. Mischief began in 1201, both on 
the Norman frontier, where Hugh de Gournay poj^g^t 
played fast and loose between the kings, and of Nor- 
in Poictou, where the barons were excited by 
the Count of la Marche to rebel against the severe re- 
pression exercised by John. The next year Phihp sum- 
moned courage to call John before his court of the peers 
of France to answer the charges of the Poictevins, and 
on his non-appearance declared him to have forfeited his 
fiefs. Arthur, who was now fifteen, and who had lost his 
mother the year before, thought that this was his oppor- 
tunity. He mustered his forces and attempted to seize 
the old queen Eleanor in the castle of Mirabel. Instead 
of taking her he was defeated and captured by John, who 
imprisoned him, and in whose hands he died, Death of 
how we know not, on April 3, 1203. Philip Arthur. 
did not hesitate to declare John the boy's murderer ; he 
held another court upon him, and again sentenced him to 
forfeiture. This time he undertook the execution of the 
sentence himself. He invaded Normandy, and took city 
after city. John did not raise a hand in its defence, and 
quitted the duchy finally in November. The ^oss of 
next year, 1204, saw Anjou and the rest of Normandy 
the patrimony in Philip's hands ; the loss of 
most of Guienne followed. Eleanor died on April i, 
1204, and on her death John's cause became hopeless. 
He did little or nothing to redeem it. In 1206 he tried 
to recover Poictou, but was obliged to purchase a truce 
by resigning his claims on the northern provinces ; and 
in 1 2 14, as a part of a general scheme of attack upon 
Philip, in which he had the support of Flanders and the 
Empire, he made another expedition, but it also ended 
in a truce by which some small fragments of Eleanor's 
inheritance were preserved to her grandchildren. 



136 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1205. 

Thus then, after a union of a hundred and forty 
years, Normandy was separated from England. Dur- 
Separation ing a portion of those years, — the reigns of 
ald'SS'''^ Wilham Rufus and part of that of Henry L, 
mandy. — they had been under different rulers, but 

they had been administered on the same principles and 
for the same interest all the time. The English had 
been ruled by Norman lords ; their laws, institutions, 
customs, had been remodelled under Norman influences. 
But they had grown under and through the discipline. 
So far as English and Normans united, the Norman 
element gave strength, order, discipline to the English; 
so far as they were in opposition the Norman tyranny 
had called forth in the English patience, perseverance, 
and a sense of nationality which they had not shown 
before. The people had had to make common cause 
with the king against the Norman feudalism, and they 
had done this until their support became absolutely 
necessary to the royal power. Gradually the baronage 
were learning the like lesson ; disciplined and educated 
under the royal training, they were finding that they 
were one in interest with the people ; and that, as the 
royal power was becoming too great for either, the two 
might in time combine to curb it. They were becom- 
ing themselves more English — more English perhaps 
in blood, more Enghsh in the possession of English 
lands and by the gradual devolution of Norman lands 
into other hands ; ready to be quite English when once 
they lost their Norman incumbrances. So when the 
time came for the barons who had lands in both coun- 
tries to make their choice between John and Philip, the 
division was effected with little noise and less trouble. 
The Norman barons and prelates gave up their English 
lands, and the English — for henceforth these have a 
right to the name of English — barons and prelates gave 



A.D. 1205. John. 137 

up their Norman lands. There was very httle internal 
division in Normandy itself, and Walter of Coutances, 
who had been Richard's prime minister and justiciar, 
died a contented subject of Philip. The separation did 
much for England. Henceforth the king is mainly if not 
solely King of England, and the welfare of England the 
main if not the sole object of English counsels. It was 
Normandy that, by the exchange of masters, lost the 
share of the benefits won from John. Yet Normandy 
was for ages freer than the rest of France, in conse- 
quence of her early discipline under the house of RoUo, 
one part of which was the policy which made her run 
in harness with the English people. But to detail all 
the benefits of the separation would be to anticipate 
very much of the later history. 

No sooner was Normandy lost than John's ecclesias- 
tical troubles began ; and they began in the most dan- 
gerous way, for the very event that caused them robbed 
him of the only counsellor he had who could have guided 
him safely through them. Hubert Walter, the t~, 1, f 
Archbishop of Canterbury — whose career we Hubert 
have traced first as a chaplain to Henry IL, 
then as Bishop of Salisbury, counsellor, captain, and 
chaplain to the third Crusade ; then as Chief Justiciar 
of England, Archbishop of Canterbury, and legate, mak- 
ing laws and canons, leading armies, administering justice, 
collecting taxes, under Richard ; and lastly, acting as 
Chancellor to John from the coronation to his death — 
Hubert Walter died on July 12, 1205. 

The' appointment to the archbishopric had been for 
many years a vexed question. The monks of Christ 
Church, Canterbury, claimed the right of free disputed 
election ; they were the chapter of the cathe- election at 
dral, and had the same right as any other 
chapter to elect their prelate. It was a right that was 



138 T lie Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1205. 

distinctly recognised by the canon law, had been granted 
by Stephen's charter, and had been so far made good 
at each change in the primacy that certain forms of 
election by them had been required as needftd to the 
validity of the appointment. But the bishops of the 
province of Canterbury, whose chief and judge the 
archbishop was, also claimed a right in the election, 
partly on mere grounds of equity, but partly also on 
the ground of a prescription which, based on the pre- 
cedent of the Anglo-Saxon councils, had given them 
an active influence on each occasion since the reign of 
Henry I. And besides these the king had his right; 
the Archbishop of Canterbury was his chief constitu- 
tional counsellor, the counsellor of whom he could not 
rid himself without breaking at once with religion and 
state custom. The king had generally since the Con- 
quest nominated the archbishop, sometimes with and 
sometimes without the co-operation of the other two 
bodies, but always practically by his own fiat : and the 
pacification between Henry I. and Anselm had con- 
tained an admission that the homage of the archbishop 
elect to the king was necessary to the full right to ex- 
ercise his constitutional power. Usually, however, as 
was generally done where the canon law and national law 
ran counter or overlapped one another, the end in view 
was secured by adroit management, saving the rights of 
each party for the time. The quarrel on this occasion 
began with the monks of Canterbury. 

This famous convent, which deserves on more than 
one occasion credit for having set a courageous example 
Eie tionof ^^ Opposition to tyranny, was a very ambitious 
the sub- and disorderly body ; and just at this moment, 

^"°^" having compelled Archbishop Hubert to pull 

down his grand new church at Lambeth, they, or a part 
of them, were quite intoxicated with conceit. It was 



A.D. 1206. John. 139 

alwaj's a great object with them to have a monk for 
archbishop ; such a leader would extend their privi- 
leges and foster their ideas of independence. So now, 
during the night following Hubert's death, the younger 
monks — no doubt a majority of the body — elected the 
sub-prior, Reginald, as archbishop, and, without asking 
the royal consent, sent him off at once to Rome to ask 
for the archiepiscopalpall and consecration. No sooner 
had Reginald crossed the Channel than, forgetting the 
promise of secrecy with which his electors had bound 
him, he gave out that he was the new archbishop, and 
the news came back to England. 

John was very angry; he had intended his minister 
John de Gray, Bishop of Norwich, to be Hubert's suc- 
cessor ; the bishops were angry because their Nomination 
prescriptive and equitable right was disre- of John de 
garded ; the senior monks were angry because 
they had been betrayed by the juniors, and the juniors 
because Reginald by his imprudent vanity had caused 
the premature discovery of their schemes. So all parties 
appealed to the Pope; and John, without waiting to hear 
what became of the appeal, had his nominee elected and 
put in possession of the estates of the see. 

We can hardly doubt that, if John had had an adviser 
like Hubert, he might have tided over the difficulty, but 
now he plunged deeper and deeper, and at Conduct of 
last lost his footing altogether. The Pope let innocent 
the appeals drag on their weary length. He 
suffered all the contending bodies to spend their strength 
and their money, and to involve and compromise them- 
selves as much as they chose. Then after a year and a 
half he decided the cause. The bishops, he said, had no 
standing-ground ; the canonical electors were the monks 
of the chapter. The sub-jDrior Reginald was rejected 
because he had not been canonically chosen ; John de 



140 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1207. 

Gray was rejected because he had been elected whilst an 
appeal was pending. The course was, therefore, clear. 
The monks were the electors ; their proctors, now at the 
Court of Rome, had full power from them to elect, and 
the king had promised to confirm their choice, having 
secretly agreed with them to elect only John de Gray ; for 
thus he had tried to impose on the Pope, sending at the 
same time large sums of money to clear the eyes of the 
Pope's advisers. Innocent III., however, was very wide- 
awake, and John's insincerity had put his game in his 
own hands. It was of no use, he said, to waste time. 
If they all went back to England they would have to 
come to Rome again for the confirmation of the election 
and the gift of the pall. They all had full powers — why 
should it not be done pleasantly and on the spot.-^ He 
had a man fit for the place — an Englishman, the first 
scholar of the day, a cardinal, in whose favour John had 
more than once written to him on other occasions ; let 
them elect him, he would confirm and consecrate him, 
and then all would be done. Whether Innocent really 
Consecra expectcd that John would submit to this we 
tion of cannot say ; probably not. But he did it. 

Langton, Only One of the monks objected, and re- 
1207- minded his brethren of their obligation to the 

king ; the rest, relying on their powers from the king and 
convent, and overawed by the dignity and urgency of 
Innocent, elected Langton. Innocent immediately wrote 
to John to report the decision and ask him to receive 
Langton as archbishop. John was furious — refused, 
threatened, and blustered. The Pope, in reply, declared 
that he had done no more than was his duty to the 
widowed Church, and, in June 1207, consecrated the 
archbishop. 

John was obdurate : proposal after proposal was made, 
offer after offer ; letter followed letter, embassy followed 



A.D. 1208-13. John. 14 T 

embassy. John seized the possessions of the convent ot 
Christ Church and threatened to wreak vengeance on the 
monks. Then the Pope answered threat with The inter- 
threat : if John did not receive the archbishop <^'^'^' ^2°^- 
the kingdom must be laid under interdict. It would then 
be unlawful to perform the services of the Church, the 
dead would be unburied, the sacraments would cease to 
be administered, or would be celebrated only in private ; 
the people would be forced by the want of spiritual ne- 
cessaries to compel the king to compliance. Still he held 
out, and in March 1208 the interdict was proclaimed. 
He then declared that he would be avenged on the 
bishops ; many of them fled, and he seized their lands. 
Again, after a while, negotiations were resumed. Lang- 
ton came to Dover to meet the king, but John would 
not face him. The Pope threatened personal excom- 
munication ; if that were not effective, it should be fol- 
lowed by a Bull of deposition and the absolution of the 
English from their obedience. If that were done, the 
execution of the sentence would be committed to one 
who would be only too glad to add England to his do- 
minions, and to gratify the hatred that he had nursed for 
so many years, even to Philip of France, the conqueror 
of Normandy and Anjou. 

For a long time John showed himself impenetrable. 
He was quite content that his people should be deprived 
of the sacraments, that the clergy should be John's 
exiled, that the whole administration of the obduracy, 
country should be paralysed, almost as it had been in the 
days of Stephen. Even the terrors of personal excom- 
munication had been too lavishly used of late to make 
much impression, for Philip had thriven under the anger 
of Innocent, and John had at this very moment his 
nephew, the Emperor Otho, a partner in the tribulation. 
The threat of deposition might be a mere threat ; it 



142 TJie Early Plantagenets, a.d. 1213. 

would be very strange if the Pope should prefer the King 
of France to the King of England ; and, if he did, John 
had a great army and fleet and treasure. 

But if he thought that Innocent III. would be swayed 
either by the ordinary motives of Popes or by the ordi- 
Persistence nary aims of policy, he was much mistaken, 
of Innocent. That great Pope had set before himself a 
grand purpose of righteousness as it appeared to him ; 
he was ready to set up the Hohenstaufen again and to 
depress the Welf, and to set Philip, the ally of the Hohen- 
staufen, and the husband of Ingeburga, above the other 
kings of the West, if he could gain his object. Innocent 
persisted. His legates openly warned John what the 
result would be if the sentence of deposition were to 
issue ; and their words came true. John found or fan- 
Panic of cied himself involved in a web of conspiracy ; 
John. warnings reached him from Wales and Scot- 
land that his enemies were intriguing all around him, 
that he and his children would be put out of the throne 
and a new race of kings brought in. Then arose Peter 
of Wakefield and prophesied that on the next Ascension- 
day John should be a king no more. Then came the 
news that Philip was equipping his fleet. So the man 
whom neither spiritual nor temporal weapons could bring 
to submission, moved by the prophecy of an impostor, 
lowered his flag and made the most abject submission 
that any king of the English has ever made. 

On the 13th of May, 1213, he met Pandulf, the Pope's 
subdeacon and envoy, at Ewell, near Dover, and swore 
fealty to the Pope ; he consented at last to receive Lang- 
ton, to restore the bishops and the monks of Canter- 
bury, and indemnify them for their wrongs: he would 
do all that was asked of him, hold his kingdoms as 
fiefs of the Apostolic see and pay tribute for them. 

The barons and people looked on in amazed acquies- 



A.D, I213. 



John. 143 



cence ; they did not, it would seem, all at once realise the 
shame of the transaction, or see that for them to be vas- 
sals of the Pope's vassal was to sink a long step in the 
scale of freedom, whether political or ecclesiastical. They 
acquiesced, some gladly welcoming any solution of the 
difficulty, some, we are told, with grief and shame. And 
so that part of the drama of the reign ends. 

John made friends with the Pope; but the struggle had 
thrown the Church into an attitude of opposition to the 
crown in which she had never stood since the Political 
Conquest. It was a providential determination, result. 
by which the clergy — who, with the people, had hitherto 
supported the royal power against the barons — were, just 
at the moment that the royal power was becoming dan- 
gerous, dislodged from the side of the crown and almost 
compelled to make common cause with the baronial 
party and the people ; awaking all at once to the need 
of common action, mutual forbearance, and the sense 
of national unity. Such was the effect of the struggle. 
Henceforth the Church in union with the barons and 
the people helps to limit the power which in the earlier 
days she had striven to strengthen. 

But the very moment that closes the ecclesiastical 
quarrel begins a new one — the baronial quarrel, which 
opens the way for the vindication of national ^-j^^ 
liberty and the consolidation of constitutional baronial 
life, as typified by Magna Carta. To realise 
this we must glance back for a moment to the beginning 
of the reign, and recur to the negotiations which Arch- 
bishop Hubert had had with the earls before he obtained 
their consent to receive John as king, and the promise 
he had made that all their lawful demands should be 
satisfied. What those demands were we cannot tell 
exactly ; probably they wanted the custody of their own 
castles and some other privileges of which they had 



144 -^^^ Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1213. 

been deprived by the strong government of the late king, 
for he had no doubt availed himself of every plea to re- 
strict their forest privileges and perhaps to extend the 
royal right of wardship. It is from Magna Carta itself, 
rather than from the historians who have told the story, 
that we gather the nature of their grievances. The pro- 
mises made at Northampton in 11 99 had never been 
fulfilled; in 1201, when the earls repeated their demands, 
John replied by laying his hands on their castles and by 
compelling them to surrender their heirs as pledges of 
their good behaviour. Matters had after that gone on 
from bad to worse. Not content with insisting on the 
feudal service of the knights, he had increased the rates of 
carucage and scutage, the two great imposts that affected 
the land, and multiplied the occasions of the exaction. 
Year after year he had collected his forces as if for a 
French war, had brought them to the coast at great ex- 
pense, and then exacted money from the barons as the 
price of their discharge. He had not led them to battle; 
he had let Normandy fall out of his hands, he had spoiled 
them and put them to shame, implicating them in his own 
cowardice. Year after year taxation increased, whilst the 
king and the kingdom became more really helpless ; for 
all Englishmen hated his hosts of mercenaries, and dis- 
trusted his project of creating a fleet which, far more than 
any national army, would be at his own absolute disposal. 
And this went on until, in 1207, he began to plunder the 
clergy, thus giving a respite to the people and the barons. 
Whilst the king could maintain himself by confiscation 
and plunder of the clergy he abstained from confisca- 
tion and plunder of the laity ; and this partly accounts for 
the equanimity with which the interdict was borne. Men 
acquiesced in the loss of their religious rights so long as 
they were in a manner compensated by immunity from 
taxation. The interdict, too, paralysed national action. 



A.D. 1213- John. 145 

John was unable to conduct anything Hke a great war as 
long as that blight lay upon the land ; he could attack 
Wales or Ireland or Scotland, but he could not attack 
France, under the circumstances ; and he was not by 
any nteans idle now, what few military successes he did 
achieve being won against the Irish. For the nation this 
state of inactivity was less destructive, less expensive 
than war. So, until the crisis of 12 13 came, the barons 
sat still ; they had no eminent leader ; Geoffrey FitzPeter, 
the man in whom as a statesman they had the most 
confidence, was the king's prime minister and justiciar. 
This, then, was the state of things when the pacification 
at Ewell put an end to the national paralysis, promised 
the restoration of the Church, a successful resistance to 
Philip, and possibly a recovery of the royal inheritance 
across the Channel. 

The first token of the new life immediately showed 
itself. It was necessary that some delay should take 
place before the interdict was taken off. By Refusal of 
the principles of law the injured persons must the barons 
be replaced in their rights before the con- 
straining measures could be suspended. Langton must 
be received before the king was absolved, the bishops 
must be indemnified for their losses before the interdict 
could be relaxed. John did not see this ; he knew that 
Philip was preparing for an invasion ; he demanded the 
feudal support of his vassals for a French W3f; they 
replied that they would not serve under an excommuni- 
cated king. John was provoked, but obliged to wait. In 
July Langton landed, came to Winchester and absolved 
the king, exacting from him an oath to observe the pro- 
mises made at his coronation, to maintain good laws and 
abolish evil customs. John, now absolved, renewed his 
command to the barons, and they declined to join in an 
expedition which took them away from England. Within 

M.H. L 



146 Tke Early Plantagenets. a. d. 12 13. 

the four seas they would serve, as bound by their tenure, 
but abroad they would not go. They did not trust the 
king or believe that it was possible to recover Normandy. 
John was savagely wroth. Time was being lost. Philip 
was gaining strength. True, his fleet had been destroyed, 
and the Pope had withdrawn his commission, but there 
were abundant causes of enmity, and at last perhaps the 
desire of revenge was uppermost. But John always re- 
venged his wrongs on the guiltless and neutral ; he deter- 
Tohn's mined, whilst his ministers were arranging for 

journey to the suspcusion of the interdict, to go into the 
North of England and punish the barons, for 
they were chiefly the Northern barons who had refused 
to follow him. He set off at full speed, and Langton 
after him, to persuade him to let the matter be settled by 
the lawyers. At Northampton the archbishop overtook 
him and convinced him of the folly of his threats ; he 
went north, however, as far as Durham, and then re- 
turned rapidly to London, where in the month of October 
he met the papal legate Bishop Nicolas of Tusculum, who 
had come to receive his formal homage, and did homage 
to him as the Pope's representative. 

During this hasty journey to Durham and back events 
ever memorable in English history had taken place. On 
Appeal to ^^ 4^^ ^^ August the justiciar Geoffrey Fitz- 
the laws of Peter held a great assembly at St. Albans, at 

^ ' which attended not only the great barons of 
the realm but the representatives of the people of the 
townships of all the royal estates. The object of the 
gathering was to determine the sum due to the bishops 
as an indemnity for their losses. There no doubt the 
commons and the barons had full opportunity of dis- 
cussing their grievances, and the justiciar undertook, in 
the name of his master, that the laws of Henry I. should 
be put in force. Not that they knew much about the 



A.D. I214. 



John. 147 



laws of Henry I., but that the prevailing abuses were 
regarded as arising from the strong governmental system 
consolidated by Henry II,, and they recurred to the state 
of things which preceded that reign, just as under Henry 
I. men had recurred to the reign and laws of Edward 
the Confessor. On the 25th of the same month the arch- 
bishop, at a council at St. Paul's, actually produced the 
charter issued by Henry I. at his coronation, and pro- 
posed that it should be presented to the king as the 
embodiment of the institutions which he had promised to 
maintain. Upon this foundation Magna Carta was soon 
to be drawn up. Almost directly after this, in October, 
the justiciar died; and John, who had hailed the death 
of Hubert Walter as a relief from an unwelcome adviser, 
spoke of Geoffrey with a cruel mockery as gone to join 
his old fellow-minister in hell. Both had acted as re- 
straints on his desire to rule despotically, and the last 
public act of Geoffrey FitzPeter had been to engage him 
to an undertaking which he was resolved not to keep. 

But matters did not proceed very rapidly. It is more 
than a year before we hear much more of the baronial 
demands. The new legate showed himself y^j^^^ 
desirous to gratify the king ; and although the to "Prance, 
Northern barons still refused to go on foreign ^^^^ 
service, he managed to prevent an open struggle. The 
king went to Poictou in February 12 14, and did not 
return until the next October. In the meanwhile the 
damages of the bishops were ascertained and the inter- 
dict taken off on the 29th of June. The war on the 
Continent occupied men's minds a good deal. Philip won 
the battle of Bouvines over the forces of Flanders, 
Germany, and England, on the 27th of July ; and John 
did nothing in Poictou to make the North Country barons 
regret their determination not to follow him. The great 
confederacy against Philip which Richard had planned, 



148 TJie Ea7dy Plantagenets. a.d. 12 14. 

and which John had been labouring to bring to bear on 
his adversary, was defeated, and Philip stood forth for 
the moment as the mightiest king in Europe. 

Disappointed and ashamed, John returned, resolved 
to master the barons, and'found them not only resolved 
The art ^^^ prepared and organised to resist him, per- 
of the haps even encouraged by his ill success. They 

had found in Stephen Langton a leader worthy 
of the cause, and able to exalt and inform the defenders 
of it. Among those defenders were men of very various 
sorts ; some who had personal aims merely, some who 
were fitted by education, accomplishments, and patriotic 
sympathies for national champions, some who were car- 
ried away by the general ardour. In general they may 
be divided into three classes : those Northern barons 
who had begun the quarrel, the constitutional party who 
joined the others in a great meeting held at St. Ed- 
mund's, in November 12 14, and those who adhered later 
to the cause, when they saw that the king was helpless. 
It was the two former bodies that presented to him their 
demands a few weeks after he returned from France. He 
at once refused all, and began to manceuvre to divide the 
consolidated phalanx. First he tried to disable them by 
demanding the renewal of the homages throughout the 
country and the surrender of the castles. He next tried to 
detach the clergy by granting a charter to secure the free- 
dom of election to bishoprics ; he tried to make terms 
with individual barons ; he delayed meeting them from 
time to time ; he took the cross, so that if any hand was 
raised against him it might be paralysed by the cry of 
sacrilege ; he wrote urgently to the Pope to get him to 
condemn the propositions, and excommunicate the per- 
sons, of the barons. They likewise presented their com- 
plaints at Rome, resisted all John's blandishments, and 
declined to relax one of their demands or to give up one 
of their precautions. 



A.D. 1 21 5. John. 149 

Negotiations ceased, and preparations for war began 
about Easter 12 15; the confederates met at Stamford, 
then marched to Brackley, Northampton, March of 
Bedford, Ware, and so to London, where they ^^^ barons. 
were received on the 24th of May. The news of their 
entry into London determined the action of those who 
still seemed to adhere to the king, and they joined them, 
leaving him almost destitute of forces, attended by a few 
advisers whose hearts were with the insurgents, and a 
body of personal adherents who had little or no political 
weight beside their own unpopularity. 

Then John saw himself compelled to yield, and he 
yielded : he consented to bind himself with promises in 
which there was nothing sincere but the reluct- Magna 
ance with which he conceded them. Magna Carta. 
Carta, the embodiment of the claims which the arch- 
bishop and barons had based on the charter of Henry L, 
was granted at Runnymede on June 15, 1 215. 

Magna Carta was a treaty of peace between the king 
and his people, and so is a complete national act. It is 
the first act of the kind, for it differs from the charters 
issued by Henry L, Stephen, and Henry W, not only 
in its greater fulness and perspicuity, but by having a 
distinct machinery provided to carry it out. Twenty- 
five barons were nominated to compel the king to fulfil 
his part. It was not, as has been sometimes said, a 
selfish attempt on the part of the barons and bishops 
to secure their own privileges ; it provided that the 
commons of the realm should have the benefit of every 
advantage which the two elder estates had won for them 
selves, and it bound the barons to treat their own de- 
pendents as it bound the king to treat the barons. Of 
its sixty-three articles some provided securities for per- 
sonal freedom, ; no man was to be taken, imprisoned, or 
damaged in person or estate, but by the judgment of his 
peers and by the law of the land. Others fixed the rate 



150 The Early Plantageitets. a.d. 1215. 

of payments due by the vassal to his lord. Others pre- 
sented rules for national taxation and for the organisa- 
tion of a national council, without the consent of which 
the king could not tax. Others decreed the banishment 
of the alien servants of John. Although it is not the 
foundation of English liberty, it is the first, the clearest, 
the most united, and historically the most important of 
all the great enunciations of it ; and it was a revelation 
of the possibility of freedom to the mediaeval world. The 
maintenance of the Charter becomes from henceforth the 
watchword of English freedom. 

The remaining sixteen months of John's reign were 
a mere anarchy, of which it would be difficult to unravel 
Attem ts to ^^^ ^^^ causes. In the first place may be 
annul the couutcd the savagc wrath of the king at being 
thus defeated and fettered ; then the unfortu- 
nate interference of the Pope, who quashed the Charter 
by a Bull of August 25, and on December 16 anathema- 
tised the barons singly and collectively ; he also peremp- 
torily suspended Archbishop Langton for his share in 
bringing about the result. 

But we are not to lay all the blame of what followed 
on John. It is true that within a few weeks after the 
crisis he had thrown off all semblance of compliance, 
but the barons were elated with their success, and 
showed very little moderation. They trusted him no 
more than he trusted them. They divided the country 
among their chiefs, some with the idea of enforcing the 
Charter, many no doubt with the desire of humiliating 
the king„ Langton's departure for Rome left them with- 
out the prudent, sincere, and honest English counsel 
that was needed for the successful vindication of the 
national cause, and gave the chief place amongst them to 
men w^ho had personal wrongs \o avenge and personal 
objects to attain. Hence the great body that had united 



A.D. 12 16. John. 151 

to produce the Charter broke up into its former elements ; 
some returned to the king's side, the more violent intri- 
gued with France and Scotland. 

John showed himself incapable of using his oppor- 
tunity. The Earl of Essex, the husband of his first wife, 
took the lead on the baronial side ; but Robert r^^^ Crown 
Fitz Walter and Eustace de Vescy, two of the offered to 
second rank, were leagued with Philip, and 
under their influence John was declared to have forfeited 
his crown. Lewis, the heir of France, was selected to be 
the king of the English. War could be delayed no longer. 
The barons began by besieging the castles of Northamp- 
ton and Oxford. John brought up his mercenaries to 
besiege Rochester, a castle which the confederates held 
in the name of the absent archbishop. He had the first 
measure of success, and, in spite of the attempt of the 
barons to relieve Rochester, captured it, showed a politic 
mercy to its defenders, and then traversed the South of 
England, securing the population as he went. He kept 
Christmas at Nottingham, then marched north and 
seized Berwick, striking consternation into the Scots. 
The Earl of Salisbuiy, his half-brother, com- John's 
manded in the Midland district, and London successes. 
became the last and almost the only refuge of the mal- 
contents. Colchester was taken by the king in March 
1216 ; and up to this point he exhibited military skill and 
energy that shows him to have been not entirely devoid 
of the qualities of his father and brother. 

But now a new actor appears. Lewis, after a long 
delay, arrived in England in May, and at once gave spirit 
and consistency to his party. John retired Successor 
before him and took up a position at Win- Lewis. 
Chester. Lewis marched by Canterbury to London, and 
there received the hom^e and fealties of his friends. In 
spite of the sentence of excommunication actually passed 



152 The Early Plantageitets. a.d. 1216. 

upon him and his adherents by the new legate, Gualo, 
he then marched on Winchester, John retiring still ; 
took Winchester, and besieged Windsor and Dover. 
The Northern lords joined him first, then the great earls, 
even the Earl of Salisbury himself. John was desperate ; 
he roved up and down the country at the head of his 
banditti, burning and plundering and slaying; whilst 
Lewis was gathering strength and friends every hour. 
At last, on October 19, death overtook the king at New- 
ark. From that very day the strength of Lewis, which 
was based on the popular and baronial hatred of John, 
began to decline. It melted away as quickly as it had 
Death of grown, and in less than a year he was obliged 
John. ^Q make peace and leave England alone. John 

ended thus a life of ignominy in which he has no rival 
in the whole long list of our sovereigns. There is no 
need to attempt an elaborate analysis of his character. 
History has set upon it a darker and deeper mark than 
she has on any other king. He was in every way the 
worst of the whole list : the most vicious, the most pro- 
fane, the most tyrannical, the most false, the most short- 
sighted, the most unscrupulous. 

There was an old legendary prophecy, spoken in a 
dream by an angel to Fulk the Good, Count of Anjou, 
when he had in an ecstasy of fervent charity carried on 
his shoulders a leprous beggar for two leagues to the 
church of Marmoutier. He was told that to the ninth 
generation his successors should extend the bounds of 
their dominion until it was immensely great. The pro- 
phecy had been fulfilled — to Anjou had been added 
Maine and Normandy, Aquitaine and England; Pales- 
tine too was ruled by his descendants ; and at last, in the 
person of Otho IV., the seed of the good count had 
reached the summit of earthly ambition. But the time 
fixed by the legend was come. John was the representa- 



A.D. i2i6. Henry III. 153 

tive of the last generation, with which the blessing ended, 
and the inheritance of Fulk the Good passed into other 
hands. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HENRY III. 

Character of Henry — Administration of William Marshall — Hubert 
de Burgh — -Henry his own minister — Foreign favourites — General 
misgovernment — Papal intrigue and taxation. 

The reign of Henry HI. is not only one of the longest 
but one of the most difficult in English history. It con- 
tains more than one great crisis, and coincides in time 
with an epoch of vast progress ; but the critical im- 
portance is by no means equally diffiised, and the rate 
and fashion of the progress are matter for minute study, 
rather than for vivid illustration. The reign covers more 
than half of one of the most eventful and brilliant cen- 
turies of the world's history ; a century made famous by 
the actions of some of the greatest sovereigns, the most 
illustrious scholars, the wisest statesmen ; the most noble 
period of architecture; the last act of the Crusades, the 
last struggle of the Papacy with the yet undiminished 
strength of the Ernpire. The life which, on the Con- 
tinent, runs in these streams is not without its purpose 
in England. 

England also looks on the thirteenth century as her 
great architectural age, the age of her great lawyers and 
some of her greatest divines. She also has her weight in 
European affairs, her struggles with the Papacy, her at- 
tempts at sound government. But the real interest of 
English history lies in minute constitutional steps of pro- 
gress, which are to be estimated rather by their later and 
united effects than by the actual and momentary appear- 



154 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1216. 

ance of growth. For during this time England has no 
guiding or presiding genius. Her king is a man by no 
means devoid of all the picturesque qualities of his fore- 
fathers, and possessed of some negatively good qualities 
which they had not ; but on the whole a degenerate son 
of such great ancestors, degenerate from their strength 
Character of ^nd virtues as well as from their faults and 
Henry III. vices. Henry III. is perhaps a better hus- 
band and father, a more devout man, than any of his 
predecessors ; he is not personally cruel or regardless of 
human life; he has no passion for war, no insatiable 
greed for the acquisition of territory, such as in the case 
of his ancestors had cost so much bloodshed. He is 
content for the most part to be king of England, and 
his success in retaining some part of his Continental 
dominion is the result far more of the honesty of his 
adversary than of any ambition, skill, or force of his 
own. In these respects England might have been ex- 
pected to fare better under Henry than she had done 
under John or Richard or Henry II.; better even than 
she was to fare under Edward I. ; yet she can scarcely, 
even viewed in the results, be said to have done so. 
The long reign was a long period of trouble, suffering, 
and disquietude of every sort. We have no reason to 
suppose that Henry was deficient in personal courage 
or in skill in arms such as a brave knight might possess 
without being a great captain in fieldwork or in sieges ; 
or that he was wanting in the desire to be thought a 
splendid and magnificent sovereign — as, indeed, he was 
thought — for he reaped the advantage of the political 
position which Henry II. had planned, and he outlived 
the greater princes whose power and character and career 
had thrown his own into the shade. Yet England did 
nothing great in his time except as against him. He 
had no great design, no energetic purpose. He was not 



A.D. i2i6. Henry III. l^J 

strong enough to be true, although he was strong enough 
to be pertinacious, resolute enough to be false. He was 
vain and extravagant ; and this, with the exception of his 
falseness, is the worst that can be said of him. Hence, 
whilst he could not inspire love or loyalty, he could 
inspire hatred, and hatred is not, in the case of kings, 
as is so often said of the feeling in the case of lower 
men, incompatible with contempt : a king may inspire 
both feelings, and be despised for moral weakness and 
iniquity, whilst he cannot safely be contemned alto- 
gether, because of his great power to cause mischief. 
Then, vanity and extravagance, which are minor faults 
in a man with strong purposes, becomxe aggravations 
and incentives to hatred in a man whose other motives 
and purposes are weak. Henry III. was well hated. 
His life, good or evil, had no gloss or glitter upon it : 
it was mean in the midst of its magnificence; it was 
wanting in the one element that leads men to respect, 
even where they fear and blame, the character of reality 
or ' veracity to a man's self.' There was no purpose, as 
there was no faith in it. 

Fifty-six years of such a king cannot but be a weari- 
some lesson to the reader, if the eye rest on the king 
only or on the circle of events of which he is Division of 
the centre ; and, to a certain degree, in these '^^^ ^^^z'^- 
ages in which we have to depend chiefly on the historians 
of the time, with little help from other sorts of literature, 
the king is necessarily the centre of every circle. The 
monotony of detail may, however, be broken by arranging 
the reign in four divisions. Henry was nine years old 
when he began to reign. The first portion, then, com- 
prises the years of his minority, and may be regarded as 
closing about the year 1227, although, as the influence of 
his early ministers continued to affect him for some years 
longer, that date is not a very distinct limit. The second 



■^54o The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1216. 

division comprises the years of his personal administra- 
tion, during which he mismanaged matters for himself, 
and which end at the year 1258, when, having brought 
affairs to a dead lock, he was obliged to consent to be 
superseded by a new scheme of government embodied 
in the Provisions of Oxford. The third period includes 
the years of eclipse, from 1258 to 1265, when the battle 
of Evesham gave him again the power as well as the 
name of king. The last period contains the seven 
years intervening between the battle of Evesham and 
the king's death, and depends for its historic interest 
entirely on the fact that it witnessed the results of the 
great struggle — the clearing of the board after the crisis 
of the game was past. 

Returning now to the state of affairs in October 
1 2 16, when John had just finished his suicidal career at 
Accession of Newark, we find the kingdom to a very great 
Henry III. extent in the hands of the party pledged to 
support Lewis, the enterprising prince to whom the 
French have not hesitated to attribute the title of the 
Lion, or the Lion-hearted. This party comprised nearly 
all the baronage, for John's insane behaviour during the 
last year had dispersed the friends whom after the grant- 
ing of Magna Carta he had gathered to his side ; even 
his brother William, Earl of Salisbury, had gone over to 
the enemy. Lewis's party had, however, only one point 
of union, the hatred and distrust inspired by John ; and 
when John was once removed, the disruption of the 
party and the expulsion of Lewis were sure to come in 
time. It was certain that all real national feeling would 
take part against a foreign king ; that all the desires for 
free and ancient institutions and good government would 
have a much better chance of contentment in the pros- 
pect of the reign of the child Henry; and that even 
the party among the barons which still clung to the 



A. D. 1 2 1 6. Henry IIL 1 5 7 

feudal ideas of government would have a much better 
opportunity of regaining its coveted influence through 
him than through Lewis. But the cause of the child 
was at first sight very weak. John had driven all the 
strong men from his side ; and Archbishop Langton, on 
whom the defence of what was now become the national 
dynasty would properly have devolved, was at Rome, in 
temporary disgrace. It may be fairly said that had not 
the Roman legate Gualo taken up a decided line, had 
not Honorius IIL seen his way to reconcile the rights 
of the nation with the maintenance of the Plantagenet 
dynasty, Lewis must for the moment have triumphed, 
and England would then have had to win her freedom 
by a mortal struggle with France. But Gualo was 
staunch. The great Pope who had committed England 
to him was just dead, but Honorius IIL was no more 
likely than Innocent to be satisfied with half-service; 
and the legate saw that both his own prospects of ad- 
vancement and the credit of the Roman see were involved 
in the success of this administration. With him was 
Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester, whom John 
had made justiciar after the death of Geoffrey FitzPeter. 
He was a Poictevin who had been transformed from a 
knight into a bishop with few qualifications Henry's 
and little ceremony; but he was faithful to P^"y- 
John and to his son, and he was the representative man 
of the foreign party at court, which stood chiefly if not 
solely by personal attachment to the king. There were 
two or three other bishops who had won their places in 
John's chancery, the Earl Ranulf of Chester, nearly the 
last left of the great feudal aristocracy of the Conquest ; 
William Marshall, the Earl of Pembroke, now growing 
old, who had been the intimate friend of the younger 
Henry, who had been a justice and regent under Richard, 
who had helped to set John on the throne, and had re- 



158 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 12 16. 

mained personally faithful to him to the last, although 
his own sons were on the side of the barons. 

This little party had the child crowned on October 28, 
at Gloucester; and on November 12, at Bristol, re-issued 
The Charter the Great Charter in his name, with some im- 
re-issued. portant omissions. They did not venture at 
so critical a time to renew the articles which placed taxa- 
tion in the hands of the national council or defined the 
nature of that assembly ; but in the final clause of the 
document these articles were declared to be suspended 
only because of the urgency of the times. The guardian- 
ship of the king and what little remained to him of the 
kingdom was placed in the hands of William Marshall, 
and the bishops and barons swore fealty to Henry, as 
his contemporaries called him — Henry IV., or Henry of 
Winchester, the son of King John. The office of guar- 
dian for an infant king had never yet been needed in 
England, at least since the days of Ethelred the Un- 
ready, and all that we know of the present arrange- 
ment is that it was made in the council, and with the 
acquiescence of the legate. The title that William Mar- 
shall took was 'governour of the king and kingdom.' 
We might hav^ expected that the queen-mother would 
have been guardian of the person of the king; but he 
had no near male kinsman to take charge of tlie king- 
dom, according to the reasonable rule that the defence 
of the inheritance belongs to the nearest heir, that of 
the person to the nearest relation who cannot inherit ; 
and accordingly the wardship of both was entrusted by 
the national council to a chosen leader. No other in 
age, dignity, experience, or faithfulness came near the 
Earl of Pembroke. 

The struggle with Lewis covers the first year of the 
reign. Winter was too far advanced at the time of the 
Bristol Council for much active warfare, and a truce was 



A. D. 1 21 7. Henry III. 159 

as usual concluded for the Christmas season, purchased 
by the surrender of some of the royal castles. Before 
the new reign began Lewis's side had lost two struggle 
of its representative men — Geoffrey de Man- "^^'^^ Lewis, 
deville, Earl of Essex, the leader of the old baronial 
party, and Eustace de Vescy, who had conducted the 
intrigues with Scotland and France which had brought 
about the present complication. The greatness of Lewis's 
early success and the haughty assumptions of his French 
followers were already disgusting the barons, and those 
who had no cause to despair of pardon were contemplating 
adhesion to Henry. The year 12 17, however, began with 
brisk action. Henry's supporters assembled at Oxford, 
Lev/is and his party at Cambridge. The military strength 
was all on the side of the latter; whilst the legate was 
treating for a truce Lewis was besieging and taking castles. 
Before Lent he had reduced the whole of Eastern Eng;- 
land, except Lincoln, which held out unswervingly under 
Nicolaa de Camvill, the wife of that Gerard who had 
drawn John into his first quarrel with Longchamp. But at 
Midlent Lewis was summoned to France; and, although 
he returned in a few wrecks, he found that some of his 
supporters had changed sides. The Earl of Salisbury 
had gone over to his nephew ; the legate was preaching 
a crusade against the disloyal and excommunicated ; 
and the loyal barons bestirred themselves to some pur- 
pose. 

They advanced from the West, just as had been the 
case in the end of Stephen's days, Lincoln again appear- 
ing to be the decisive battle-ground. And so it was. 
Lewis returned in an evil mood, determined to treat 
England as a conquered country ; the barons detected his 
design and deserted him one by one. At Whitsuntide 
the king's party advanced to relieve Lincoln under the 
Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Chester, and the legate. 



i6o The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 121 7. 

Lincoln was relieved at the cost of a battle ; but in the 
battle was slain Lewis's chief captain, the Count of 
Battle of Perche, and Saer de Quincy and Robert Fitz- 
Lincoln, Walter, the leading spirits of the anti-royalists, 

^^^'^' were captured. Lewis was not there, but en- 

gaged in the siege of Dover Castle, which had not yet 
been taken. On the news of the battle he threw himself 
into London, and there awaited foreign succour. The 
foreign succour came as far as Thanet ; but there, on St. 
Bartholomew's Day, it was beaten and dispersed by the 
English fleet, which thus justified the pains and cost that 
John had spent upon it. 

That defeat decided the struggle; within a month 
Lewis had consented to make peace and go home. The 
Departure legate showed a wise and politic mercy in 
of Lewis. treating the rebels as ecclesiastical offenders 
and admitting them to absolution and penance; and 
William Marshall was not anxious to alienate friends by 
exacting the penalties for a treason which it might be 
difficult to define, and in which his own family was 
largely implicated. By Michaelmas 1217 the peace was 
restored, and the Charter again re-issued in a still more 
„, . , . modified form. This may be regarded as the 

Ihird issue 

of the ending of the Magna Carta struggle m its first 

Charter. phase. It was now become permanently the 
palladium of English constitutional liberty; it was re- 
cognised as the salvation of king and kingdom, and 
the legate, instead of anathematising, had turned and 
blessed it. 

The rule of William Marshall continued until his 
death, early in 12 19. The kingdom was ostensibly at 
peace ; but order was not easily restored after a struggle 
which had lasted for more than four years, and which 
was itself the result of a long period of misgovernment. 
In the general struggle for power which followed the 



A.D. 1 21 7. Henry III. 161 

pacification it was not always the wisest or the best 
men that gained the ultimate ascendency. It is clear 
that from the very first there were among the royal 
counsellors men who had neither understood nor sympa- 
thised with the policy of Langton. Hence the omission 
from the reissued charters of the clauses by which the 
king forbade and renounced unconstitutional taxation, 
and prescribed the order of the national council. Many 
of the men who had been leaders of the baronial 
party at Runnymede had fallen into treasonable com- 
plicity with France or had perished in the war; so 
that the regent was forced to give a disproportionate 
share of power to the personal friends of John, foreigners 
and mercenaries as they were, or to men like the Earl 
of Chester and the Count of Aumale, who fought really 
for their own feudal independence. Thus we must ac- 
count for the power of such men as Falkes de Breaute, 
who almost caused a civil war before he would submit 
to the law or resign to the king the castles which he 
held as the king's servant. Hence also, perhaps, the 
retention of Hubert de Burgh in the justiciarship ; for he, 
great man as he afterwards proved himself, was as yet 
only known as a creature of John. Hence too the distin- 
guished position retained by Peter des Roches, although 
he, as Bishop of Winchester, had a dignity and power 
of his own. Hence, further on, the jealousy with which, 
after the death of the Earl of Pembroke, the administra- 
tion of Hubert de Burgh was viewed by the barons, and 
the constant risings against royal favourites and against 
the too strong government exercised in the name of the 
boy king. These troubles furnish nearly all the history 
of the years of Henry's minority. 

The expulsion of the French, the restoration of order, 
and the securing of the validity of the Great Charter by 
successive and solemn confirmations, were the chief debt 

M. H. M 



1 62 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1220. 

that England owed to William Marshall, So long as he 
lived he was able also to lessen the pressure of the hand 
w rk f ^^ ^^ Roman legate and to keep in order the 
William foreign servants of John. Early in 12 19 he 
died. Gualo, a few months before, having 
incurred considerable odium by his severe and avaricious 
conduct during an otherwise beneficial administration, 
resigned the legation and returned to Rome. The place 
of the regent was not easy to fill, and no successor was 
appointed with the same power and functions. Peter des 
New Go- Roches became guardian of the royal person ; 
vernment. Pandulf, the envoy of 1 2 1 3, became legate in 
Gualo's place ; and these two, with Hubert de Burgh as 
justiciar, formed a sort of triumvirate or supreme council 
of regency. Langton had now returned from exile ; the 
Earls of Chester, Salisbury, and Ferrers had gone on 
Crusade, and matters seemed likely to run smoothly for 
some time. At Whitsuntide 1220 Henry was solemnly 
crowned at Westminster, at the express command of the 
Second Popc, by the hands of Archbishop Langton, 

coronation. ^^^ yN\\\\ all the ccremonies which at the 
Gloucester coronation had been omitted. It was a very 
grand ceremony ; all the due services of the great feuda- 
tories were regularly performed, and it was made a sort 
of typical exhibition of the national restoration. It had 
also a political intention. If Henry was now in full 
possession of his royal dignity, it was high time for him 
to take back into the royal custody the castles which 
through policy or necessity had been hitherto left in 
dangerous hands. The feudal lords must learn to submit 
to Henry III. as they had done to Henry II.; the foreign 
adventurers must be removed from the posts which, 
although they had earned them by fidelity, they had 
made the strongholds of tyranny and oppression. Eng- 
land must be reclaimed for the English, and not even the 



A.D. 1221-23. . Henry III. 163 

legatine, not even the papal, influence must be allowed to 
retard the national progress towards internal unity and 
prosperity. * 

The demand for the restoration of the royal castles 
produced the first outbreak. Just as, at the beginning of 
the reign of Henry II., William of Aumale William of 
had refused to surrender Scarborough, so Falke^^cf'^'^ 
now his grandson refused to surrender Rock- Breaute. 
ingham. Immediately after the coronation the king 
was brought to the siege, but the garrison fled as 
he approached. The earl, undismayed, seized in 1221 
the castles of Biham and Fotheringay ; and although he 
resisted not only the strength of the government but the 
sentence of excommunication also, he was forced to 
submit. In 1222 and 1223 the struggle was renewed in 
more formidable dimensions. The Earl of Chester, who 
had at first supported the government, made himself the 
spokesman of the feudal party ; and the foreigners, the 
chief of whom was Falkes de Breaute, did their best to 
unseat the justiciar, who was now recognised as the chief 
man in the administrative council. The evil was in- 
creased by the discord in the council itself. Peter des 
Roches was known to prompt the resistance to Hubert 
de Burgh and to be the patron of the foreigners ; he 
neither understood nor loved the institutions of Eng- 
land, and although an able and experienced man was 
very ambitious and altogether unscrupulous. In 1224, 
however, the contest was decided. An act of violent in- 
subordination on the part of Falkes de Breaute brought 
down the king and the kingdom upon him ; the great con- 
spiracy of which he held the strings was broken up, and he 
himself, notwithstanding the secret support of Peter des 
Roches and the open mediation of the Pope, was banished 
from the land. His fall involved the humiliation of the 



164 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1220-25. 

feudal lords who were allied with, him, and the expulsion 
of the foreigners whom he represented and headed. Peter 
des Roches himself had to take a subordinate place. 

Long before this England had been relieved from the 
presence of the legate. In 1220 Langton had gone to 
sfj Y i Rome and obtained a promise that so long as 
Hubert de he Hvcd no Other legate should be sent to 
"^^ ■ England. Pandulf seems to have regarded 

the promise as implying his own recall. He was weary 
of his post ; and having obtained his election to the see 
of Norwich, resigned in July 1221. Before the end of 
the year 1224 the able hand of Hubert de Burgh had 
shaken off the three dangerous influences ; he had re- 
claimed England for the English. But he had done it 
at considerable cost of taxation. This the country was 
ill able or disposed to bear, and the alarm of war was 
sounding on the side of France, where Lewis succeeded 
his father in 1223. It was in order to obtain from the 
Re-issue of nation a grant of money to defray these ex- 
the Charter, penscs and to equip an army that Henry, 
under Hubert's advice, for the third time confirmed the 
charter. But, although these were the special occasions of 
the re-issue, the confirmation itself is a typical act, and 
might be regarded as the renewed good omen of a happy 
reign. Most of the hereditary enemies of Henry were dead ; 
all foreign influences were banished; the right of the nation 
to sound and good government was recognised by the 
charter itself The general acquiescence in the policy of 
the administration was shown by the grant of a fifteenth 
of all moveable property to the king, which was made 
conditional on the confirmation of the charter, and the 
national union was proved by the long list of prelates and 
magnates who attested it. Henry, by altering the terms 
in which he enacted it from the older form, 'by the 
council' of his barons, to 'by my spontaneous will,' 



A.D. 1227. Henry IIL 165 

seemed to be giving more than a mere official ratifi- 
cation — a personal and sincere adhesion to the great 
formula of the constitution. 

Two years after this Henry came of age, and then 
begins not only his dangerous and unbusinesslike med- 
dling with foreign politics but the gradual reve- Henry in 
lation of the fact that he was not more willing ^'^^^• 
than his father had been to act and reign as a constitu- 
tional king. From this point date the constant demands 
of the Pope on the one hand, and the king on the other, 
for money to be spent on purposes which called forth 
little sympathy in England, or which were opposed to the 
national instincts ; constant difficulties with the adminis- 
tration, and, consequent upon those difficulties, that alien- 
ation of popular affection from the person of the young 
sovereign whose growth had been intently and hopefully 
watched— an alienation which grew from year to year, 
as the conviction gained ground that he was not to be 
trusted, any more than he could be honoured or ad- 
mired. But for this conviction that serious attack on 
his authority, which amounted in the end to an absolute 
superseding or deposition, could have been neither con- 
templated nor carried into effect. This was not the mere 
result of a mismanaged minority. No doubt the posses- 
sion or even the anticipation of the possession of great 
power is a dangerous obstacle to education ; and in 
every case of a royal minority which we have in English 
history we find the same miserable story of a most im- 
portant charge neglected, and the most important of all 
possible trusts unfulfilled. It may be that Hubert de 
Burgh and Peter des Roches had to work on an un- 
kindly soil. In the child of John and Isabella we should 
not look for much inherited goodness ; yet Richard of 
Cornwall, Henry's brother, was a very different man 
from Henry himself. Still the fault cannot be ascribed 



1 66 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1227. 

altogether to the education. It would have been a sore 
discipline for a noble mind, but to Henry it was fatal. 
He learned nothing great; what was good in him was 
dwarfed and warped. 

The history of the thirty-one years, 1227 to 1258, 
which form the period of his personal administration, 
is one long series of impolitic and unprincipled acts. 
These acts may, it is true, be arranged under certain 
distinct heads, but it is not to be forgotten that they 
were at the time the successive expressions of one 
weak, headstrong mind, and as such have a unity and 
a bearing upon one another, creating as they proceed a 
^ide of hostile feeling in the nation that becomes at last 
overwhelming. It would be an unprofitable exercise of 
ingenuity and patience to detail these acts in order of 
time, and to point out how one led to another. They 
may be divided into the three heads of internal mis- 
government, a mischievous foreign policy pursued under 
the guidance of the popes, and the unfortunate line 
adopted with regard to the French provinces on which 
the king still retained his hold. 

Under the first of these come Henry's reluctance to 
observe the charters, heavy taxation for a long series of 
, , years, the revival of the hated system of 

misgovern- foreign favouritism, the rash displacement 
™^" ■ and replacement of ministers, the attempts of 

the king to rule by means of mere clerks and servants 
without proper ministers, and the series of domestic 
troubles which arise from these causes. Under the second 
Papal de- head come the heavy demands of the popes 
mands. fQj. pecuniary help, or for the preferment of 

Italians in English churches, and the successive attempts 
made by the several pontiffs to use Henry, his wealth, 
and influence in Europe, for the destruction of the house 
of Hohenstaufen, and thus for the promotion of designs 



A.D. 1228. Henry III. 167 

which worked his final humihation. Under the third 
come the several expeditions to France, the negotiations 
with Lewis IX., the administration of Gas- Foreign 
cony, and the part taken by Richard of Corn- affairs. 
wall and Simon de Montfort in the administration of 
that province. These three lines of mischief combine to 
produce the great crisis of 1258, in which the crisis of 
leading spirit was Simon de Montfort, in which ^^ss. 
the critical and determining cause was the negotiation 
with the Pope for the kingdom of Sicily, and in which 
the form of the constitutional demands made by the op- 
position was determined by the character of the internal 
misgovernment which had been going on so long. Where 
the same points so frequently recur a chronological sum- 
mar}^ becomes monotonous, and a comprehensive sketch 
is sufficient to convey all the lessons that are of real 
value. 

Henry's first act was an ill-omened one. In January 
1 227, in a council at Oxford, he declared himself of full 
age to govern, emancipated himself from the Henry of 
guardianship of Peter des Roches, but insisted ^^e- 
that all charters and other grants sealed during his mino- 
rity should be regarded as invalid until a confirmation of 
them had been purchased at a fixed rate. This declara- 
tion, founded, it would seem, on a resolution of the 
council agreed on in 1 2 1 8, that no grants involving per- 
petuity should be sealed until he came of age, was heard 
with great alarm. The alarm spread further when it was 
known that the forest boundaries, which had been settled 
by perambulation in 1225, were to be re-arranged under 
royal direction. If the forest liberties were to be tam- 
pered with, the Great Charter itself would be in peril. 
But either the alarm was unfounded or the excitement 
that followed ensured its own remedy. Large sums were 
raised by confirming private charters ; but, on a repre- 



1 68 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1227- 

sentation made by a body of the earls the forest ad- 
ministration was let alone and the Great Charter was 
not threatened. The whole project was seen to be a 
mere expedient for raising money. 

Matters went on peacefully for some four or five 
years, and if complaints of misgovernment were heard 
they were, by the ready action of Hubert, who continued 
to be justiciar, either remedied or silenced. From 1227 
to 1232 Hubert filled the place of prime minister, in very 
much the same way as Hubert Walter and Geoffrey Fitz- 
Peter had done, sacrificing his own popularity -to save 
his master's character, and risking his master's favour by 
lightening the oppressions and exactions of irresponsible 
government. Besides the wars with Wales and Scotland 
which mark these years, and the pecuniary demands 
which were necessarily made for carrying on the wars, 
the chief interest of the period arises from the fact that 
Papal taxa- it saw the first of those papal claims and ex- 
^^°^- actions which were to exercise so baneful an 

influence on the rest of the reign. Archbishop Langton 
died in 1228, and Henry's envoys at Rome purchased 
the confirmation of his successor. Archbishop Richard, 
by promising the Pope a heavy subsidy to sustain him in 
his war with the Emperor. When the time came for this 
demand to be laid before the assembled council Earl 
Ranulf of Chester took the lead in opposing it. The 
means taken notwithstanding to exact money roused a 
strong popular feeling. The papal collectors were plun- 
dered, the stores taken in kind were burned ; and so in- 
effectual were the means taken to suppress the outrages, 
that suspicion fell, not without good reason, on the justi- 
ciar himself as conniving at this rough justice. Henry 
was already weary of his minister, and his strongest feel- 
ings were the devotion which he consistently maintained 
towards the papacy and his determination, equally reso- 



-1232. 



Henry III. 169 



lute, to let no scruple prevent him from acquiring money 
whenever he had the opportunity. Peter des Roches, 
who had been . absent from England for some years on 
Crusade, had now returned. He lost no opportunity of 
increasing the king's dislike to Hubert, and of ^^^ ^^ 
promoting the interest of the foreigners who Hubert de 

1 • • • T TT ) Burgh. 

were begmnmg agam to speculate on Henry s 
weakness. The king was told that his poverty was 
owing to the dishonesty of his ministers^ who were grow- 
ing rich to his disadvantage ; he had no money to carry 
on war, whilst Hubert de Burgh was becoming more 
powerful in acquisitions and alliances, and was even 
using his influence to screen offenders against the Apos- 
tolic see. Henry was not slow in learning to be un- 
grateful. He had been taught by Hubert himself that he 
must discard the favourite servants of his father; Hubert 
had to exemplify, however unrighteously, his own lesson. 
In July 1232 he w^as driven from office, overwhelmed, 
as Becket had been, with charges which it was impossible 
definitely to disprove ; and after some vain at- victor of 
tempts to escape, he was before the end of the Peter des 

, ., TT- Roches. 

year a prisoner and penniless. His successor 

in the justiciarship was Stephen Segrave, a creature of 

Peter des Roches. Peter himself resumed the influence 

over the unstable king which he had won in his early 

years, and filled the court and ministry with foreigners, 

in whose favour he displaced all the king's English 

servants. 

Hubert's fall was great enough in itself to excite pity; 
even Earl Ranulf of Chester, who had been most opposed 
to him as a minister, was moved to intercede for him. 
But far more than his personal disgrace the reversal of 
his English policy alarmed the baronage. Earl Ranulf, 
the natural head of opposition, died in 1232 ; Richard 
of Cornwall, who had hitherto shown signs of attachment 



I/O The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1234. 

to the national cause, was scarcely fitted to lead an attack 
on his brother's ministers; the Earl Marshall Richard, 
Richard son of the great regent, and younger brother 

Marshall. of William Marshall who had married the 
king's sister, became the spokesman of the nation. 
Richard Marshall was one of the most accomplished 
knights and the most educated gentleman of the age; 
but he had to contend against the long experience and 
unscrupulous craft of Peter des Roches. After a distinct 
declaration made by the barons to the king, at his sug- 
gestion, that they would not meet the Bishop of Win- 
chester in court or council, and a positive demand for 
the dismissal of the foreign servants who had been placed 
in office by him, the Earl Marshall was declared a 
traitor. The king marched against him and drove him 
into alliance with the disaffected Welsh. A cruel strata- 
gem of Peter des Roches induced him to cross over to 
Ireland to defend his estates there, and, in a battle into 
which he was drawn by Peter's agents, he was betrayed 
and mortally wounded. For a long time after his death 
the baronage continued to be without a leader of their 
own. 

The cunning of Bishop Peter prevailed to the de- 
struction of Earl Richard, but it was not sufficient to 
Y \\ c ensure his own position. The barons, although 

Peter des they lost their leader when the Earl Marshall 
fled, were not inclined to be submissive, and 
the bishops, now under the guidance of Edmund of 
Abingdon the primate consecrated in 1234, insisted that 
justice should be done to the Earl Marshall and that 
the foreigners should be removed. The king was com- 
pelled to submit; Bishop Peter was ordered to retire 
from court, and with him fell the men whom he had 
patronised. But it was too late to do justice to the 
earl or to stop the measures contrived for his ruin. As 



A.D. 1234-44. 



Hemy III. lyi 



a matter of fact the dismissal of Peter des Roches pre- 
ceded by a few days the death of his victim far away 
in Ireland. Hubert de Burgh, however, profited by the 
change and regained his estates, although not his poli- 
tical power, when his rival fell. 

To some extent the administration of Hubert and of 
Peter after him had been a continuance of the royal 
tutelage ; from this time Henry determined to jj^^^ .^ 
be not only king but chief administrator. Ste- plan of go- 
phen Segrave had been a very mean successor '^^'^"^'^^• 
to Hubert in the great office of justiciar; henceforth the 
officer who bears the name is no longer the lieutenant- 
general of the king, but simply the chief officer of the law 
courts. The supreme direction of affairs Henry kept in 
his own incompetent hands. The position of the chan- 
cellor too was stronger than was convenient to a king 
who intended to have his own way. Ralph Neville, the 
Bishop of Chichester, had received the great seal in 1226, 
by the advice and consent of the great council of the 
nation ; he now refused to surrender it to the king 
except at the express command of the assembly by which 
he had been appointed. Henry succeeded in wresti' ^ 
the seal from him in 1238, but he retained the inco.^ie 
and title of chancellor until his death in 1244. The 
constant petitions of the barons that a properly quah- 
fied justiciar, chancellor, and treasurer should be elected 
or appointed, subject to the approval of the national 
council, show that this independent action of the king 
was regarded with jealousy, and that they had already 
in germ the idea of having the affairs of the kingdom 
administered by men who would be responsible, not 
only as Becket and Hubert de Burgh had been to the 
king, but to the nation, as represented at the time in 
the great council of the barons. 

The history of these years is a series of national 



172 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1234-44. 

complaints and royal shortcomings and evasions, diver- 
sified by occasional campaigns or splendid marriage 
Influx of ceremonies. In 1235 Henry married his sister 
foreigners. Isabella to the Emperor Frederick II, ; in 
1236 he himself married Eleanor of Provence. Both mar- 
riages were the occasions of great outlay of money, which 
the nation was rapidly becoming more and more unwill- 
ing to pay. Nor was the discontent owing to taxation 
only. The queen's relations poured into the country as 
into a newly-discovered gold-field ; dignities, territories, 
high ofEce in Church and State were lavished upon them, 
and the rumour went abroad that they were attempt- 
ing to change the constitution of the kingdom. Under 
their mfluence the old foreign agents who had flourished 
under the patronage of Peter des Roches returned into 
court and council, and brought with them the old abuses 
and the old jealousies in addition to the new. In 1238 
the king gave his sister Eleanor, the widow of William 
Marshall the younger, to Simon de Montfort. The mar- 
riage and subsequent quarrel with Simon served to aug- 
ment the jealousy and divisions at court. In 1242 
Henry made a costly expedition to France, from which 
he returned in 1243; a new flood of strangers, this time 
the Poictevin sons and kinsfolk of his mother, followed 
him. In 1244 Earl Richard of Cornwall married the 
queen's sister ; and in 1245 Boniface of Savoy, the queen's 
uncle, was consecrated to the see of Canterbury. 

Each of these years is marked by a struggle about 
taxation, conducted in the assembly of barons and bishops, 
^ ., which from this time is known both in history 

Constitu- ■' 

tionai and records by the name of PARLIAMENT. 

griev . j^ these discussions the lead is taken some- 
times by the bishops, sometimes by the barons ; now it 
is the papal, now the royal demands that excite oppo- 
sition. The charters are from time to time confirmed 



A. D. 1234-44. He7iry III. 173 

as a condition of a money grant ; and as often as money 
is required they are found to need fresh confirmation. 
Up to the time of his marriage Earl Richard of Cornwall 
constantly appears among the remonstrants ; Archbishop 
Edmund, as long as his patient endurance lasts, heads 
the opposition of the bishops ; Robert Grosseteste, the 
Bishop of Lincoln, the great divine, scholar, and pastor 
of the Church, is not less distinguished as a leader in 
the plans propounded for the maintenance of good go- 
vernment and the diminution of the royal power of 
oppression. 

Every class suffered under the absolute administra- 
tion, but the citizens of London and the Jews perhaps 
most heavily, as from them without any in- pariiamen- 
termediate machinery the king contrived to tary discus- 
wring money. Not slowly, or gradually but 
by great and rapid accumulations the heap of national 
grievances grew, and but for the want of a leader a 
forcible attempt at revolution must have occurred much 
sooner than it did. In 1237 the national council gave 
their money under express conditions, none of which 
were observed, as to the control and purpose of ex- 
penditure. In 1242 they presented to the king a long 
list of the exactions to which they had submitted out 
of their goodwill to assist him, but from which no 
good had arisen. In 1244, when Henry had assembled 
the magnates in the refectory at Westminster and with 
his own mouth had asked for money, the two great 
estates present, lay and clerical, determined, after de- 
bating apart, to act in concert, and chose twelve repre- 
sentatives to make terms with the king. The twelve, 
of whom the chief were Richard of Cornwall and Simon 
de Montfort, demanded the confirmation of the charters, 
and the election of a justiciar, chancellor, and treasurer ; 
they broached even a plan for constitutional reform 



1/4 The Early Plantagenets. a. d, 1245- 

according to which a perpetual council was to be ap- 
pointed to attend the king and secure the execution of 
reforms to be embodied in a new charter. Henry first 
resisted, then produced an order from the Pope ; but 
the barons were unable to persevere in their designs. 
They refused, however, to make a large grant and voted 
a sum which they could not legally object to pay for the 
marriage of the king's daughter. 

The pages of the great historian, Matthew Paris, teem 
with details like this. Whether money were given or re- 
Henry's fusedjthe kingwent on asking for more; whether 
impolicy. jjg j-Qg|- ^j^g national complaints with promise 
or with insult, the evils remained alike unredressed. No 
permanent ministers were appointed; the king nomi- 
nated a clerk or a judge from time to time to despatch 
formal business, and every important transaction for 
which he himself was not personally competent was left 
to be settled at haphazard. Some good results followed ; 
the country learned that the king was really dependent 
on the nation, although it failed to impress that lesson 
upon Henry himself; every year the machinery for as- 
sessing and collecting the taxes assumed more and more 
a representative character, and the forms as well as the 
spirit of a parliamentary constitution grew apace. But 
in the countless assemblies which were held during this 
part of the reign it is not possible to trace any uniformity 
or even any tendency towards a system of representative 
government. The councils are more busy about their 
powers than about their constitution, and the representa- 
tive machinery already in use for carrying out the execu- 
tive part of the public business does not yet reach the 
region of legislative or supreme taxation. 

No great design is attempted during these years ; the 
barons see no return for the great costs to which 
the king puts them. The King of France goes on 



-1257- Henry III. 175 

Crusade, but Henry only raises money on the pretext 
and spends or wastes it on other purposes. The Pope 
drains the kingdom. There are murmurs but National 
no blows : no conspiracies, no leader. Simon inactivity. 
de Montfort is employed in Gascony ; Earl Richard 
minds his own business. The kingdom is again handed 
over to the Poictevins, yet no one has position or energy 
to take the lead. So matters drag on. In 1248, 1249, 
1255 the demands for a regular ministry are confirmed; 
and now it is desired that they shall be appointed by 
the common council of the nation. In 1237 and again 
in 1253 the charters are solemnly renewed, and excom- 
miunication passed on the transgressors of them. In 
1254 an assembly is held to grant an aid, to which two 
knights of the shire are called from each county, elected 
by the county court — a very important step towards the 
creation or development of a parliamentary system. At 
last, in 1257, by a series of events like these, the patience 
of the baronage is absolutely worn out, and the king by 
an extraordinary act of daring presumption gives the 
signal for the outbreak. 

Our second division of the causes which led to the 
great crisis of the reign comprises Henry's relations 
with the popes and the papal policy. It is Henry and 
not a thing to be wondered at that Henry ^'^^ Popes. 
should adhere closely to the Pope : for it was papal in- 
fluence that made him king, and his mind was formed 
under religious influences redolent of papal ideas. He 
had to deal too with popes of high and masterly minds, 
and bowed implicitly to such. He never disputed or 
quarrelled with any pope; no point was to his mind 
worth defence. He was just old enough to remember 
the last days of the Interdict; he knew how Hono- 
rius III, had supported him against Philip and Lewis; 
he watched the long humiliation of Frederick II. by 



Ty6 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1226-52. 

Gregory IX. and Innocent IV. He never knew a weak 
pope. He might have resisted, and would have gained 
The arch- immensely by resistance : his archbishops, 
bishops. Stephen Langton, Richard le Grand, and 

Edmund of Abingdon, were three model ecclesiastics, 
men unassailable in the points of patriotism, inde- 
pendence, and sanctity. Even Boniface of Savoy, 
although he was neither an Englishman nor a saint, 
would have boldly resisted the Pope and strengthened 
the king with his sword if not with his staff. But Henry 
was generally thwarting his archbishops ; he alienated 
their support and wore out their patience. Edmund he 
drove into exile by his tyranny and extortion; and even 
Boniface on occasion chose to side with the national 
party rather than to support such a king. 

The string of papal difficulties begins in 1226, when 
the Pope demanded a share of the property of every 
List of papal Cathedral church and monastery. In 1229 
assump- Gregory IX. demanded a tithe of all move- 

ables, which only Earl Ranulf of Chester had 
courage to refuse. In 1231 the Roman exactions produced 
public tumults, and led to the quarrel which ruined Hubert 
de Burgh. In 1237 the king invited Cardinal Otho to re- 
form the Church. He. stayed until 1241, visited Oxford, 
and put the University under interdict ; visited Scotland 
in 1239, and in 1240 exacted enormous sums for the benefit 
of the Pope, besides forbidding the king to bestow prefer- 
ment on Englishmen until three hundred Italians had 
been provided for. In 1244 Innocent IV. sent a still more 
intolerable representative, Master Martin, who within a 
year was obliged to fly; but neither king nor parliament 
ventured to refuse money. Besides direct payments a 
vast proportion pf English livings was held by foreigners. 
Bishop Grosseteste, who regarded these usurpations as the 
very destruction of the flock for which he was ready to 



A.D. 1252-5. Henry III. lyj 

lay down his life, declared that in 1252 the Pope's nomi" 
nees had revenues within the realm three times as great 
as the royal income. There was too a constant succes- 
sion of appeals to Rome, as the episcopal elections were 
disputed, and the Pope either assumed the power of pre- 
sentation or sold the justice or injustice that it pleased 
him to dispense. To understand how these vast sums 
were disposed of by the popes involves the careful read- 
ing of the history of. Frederick II. The exactions of 
Gregory IX. begin with the first quarrel with Frederick, 
and the crowning difficulties of Henry III. are caused 
by his entanglement with Alexander IV. on the subject 
of Sicily. Yet Frederick II. was his own brother-in-law, 
and a prince who, whatever his faults may have been, 
suffered papal enmity for reasons which had nothing to 
do with his shortcomings. Frederick was admired and 
pitied in England as a papal victim. Lewis IX. could 
refuse to be an instrument in his humiliation, but 
Henry III. seems to have tied himself to the Pope's 
chariot-wheels. The Pope and the king, according to 
the saying of the time, left to men only the task of dis- 
cerning whether the upper or the nether millstone were 
the heaviest. 

Fatal as the friendship of Gregory IX. and Innocent 
IV. had been, it was the policy of Alexander IV. which 
broke the long-enduring patience of the baron- Henry 
age and compelled them to bind the king's ^in^dom^rf 
hands. Innocent IV. in 1252 had offered the Sicily. 
kingdom of Sicily to Richard of Cornwall. The negotiation 
went on until in 1255 it was accepted, not for Richard, but 
for Edmund, the king's second son. It might have been 
supposed that as the quarrel was the Pope's Alexander 
would have hired Henry to fight his battles; but by this 
adroit system of enlistment he reversed the rule. He 
fought the battles and expected Henry to pay him, 

M.H. N 



1/8 The Early Planiagenets. a. d. 1225-54. 

Henry was weak enough to bear this and even to pledge 
the credit of the kingdom to the Pope for the sum which 
the crafty Italian moneylender had advanced to main- 
tain his own quarrel. It was this act that led to the 
demand for a new constitution, which opens the next 
great epoch of this long dismal reign. 

Henry's French transactions, the third of the three 
Henry's heads in which we have arranged the second 

n-an^a^- portion of the reign, must be summed up very 

tions. briefly, for they are in themselves the least 

important part of his history. 

Of all the possessions of Henry II. only Aquitaine 
and Gascony remained to John at the time of his death ; 
and these remained, not because they loved the Planta- 
genets, for they hated them, but because they hated all 
government, and found that distant England was a less 
vigorous mistress than nearer France. So, as they had 
opposed Henry II., they resisted Philip and Lewis; and 
they continued subject to the English kings until the 
reign of Henry VI., but shorn of their proportions. 
Henry III. in his early years entertained some idea of 
reclaiming all. In 1225 Richard of Cornwall was sent 
to Bourdeaux, and re-established order in Gascony; in 
1229, during the minority of Lewis IX., not only Gas- 
cons but Normans proposed to Henry the restoration 
of the Continental dominions of his house; and in 1230 
he actually went across by Brittany and Anjou and re- 
ceived the homage of Poictou, whilst the Earl of Chester 
made an attempt on Normandy. But in the following 
year a truce was made, and no more is said of a French 
war for twelve years. In 1242, however, at the invitation 
of the Poictevins, over whom Lewis had set his brother 
Alfonso as count, Henry made a great expedition, which 
he managed with so little felicity that he owed his escape 
from captivity to the mercy of his enemy, just as he owed 



A.D. 1254. Herny III. 179 

his continued possession of Gascony to that enemy's 
good faith. After his return home in 1243 the only 
foreign difficulties which occurred for several years 
arose from the conduct of the Gascons, who, finding no 
pressure put upon them by Lewis, took courage to rebel 
on their own account, and required constant chastise- 
ment. From 1249 onwards Simon de Montfort was em- 
ployed to keep them in order ; and whilst his demands 
for money were one cause of Henry's difficulties at home, 
Henry's treatment of him laid the foundation of a last- 
ing enmity. The complaints of the Gascons against his 
severe administration were readily listened to, and Simon 
was easily convinced that his employment in France was 
a mere expedient for securing his ruin. In 1253 he re- 
signed his command, and Henry for the third time went 
in person to France, where he stayed for a year and a 
half, returning at the end of 1254 more hopelessly in 
debt than ever. 

From this point the accumulating grievances of the 
nation, whether constitutional, religious, or political, blend 
in one mass ; all the oppressed and offended make com- 
mon cause. Extortion, faithlessness, improvidence, im- 
potence at home anrd abroad, compel and suggest their 
own remedy ; and every class having been insulted or 
oppressed, the time and the men for reform and revenge 
are not wanting. 



CHAPTER IX. ^^a 

SIMON DE MONTFORT. 

Delay of the crisis — Simon de Montfort — Parliament of 1258 — Pro- 
visions of Oxford — Political troubles — Award of St. Lewis — 
Battle of Lewes — Baronial government — Battle of Evesham — 
Closing years. 

The long and dreary survey of the first forty years of 
Henry's reign has its chief use in enabling us to trace 



1 80 The Early Plantageiiets. ch. ix. 

the string of events, the accumulation of causes and 
motives, which produced the more striking comphcations 
Why the '^^ ^^^ remaining sixteen years. We have 
constitu- seen that on the one hand a gradually in- 

tional crisis . . . - . , . 

was de- creasmg spirit 01 resistance was being roused 

layed. among all classes of the people. Through 

a shifty, shuffling, purposeless public policy on the king's 
part, a sullen determination to reign as despotically as 
his father had done constantly makes itself apparent. 
The papal influence, too, by which his foreign policy 
was guided, was gradually bringing him up to a point 
at which the national spirit would no longer endure him. 
We cannot fail to perceive further that Henry's deter- 
mination to act as his own minister could have but one 
result — that, when the time for account came, the account 
would be demanded of him himself personally : he would 
have no agents behind whom he could screen himself, or 
whom he could sacrifice to justify himself. Henry's per- 
sonal character, his pliancy and want of principle, may 
perhaps have helped to put off the day of account, so 
long delayed, and it may have been his own misfortune 
that he lived so long to try the patience of the people. 
Another reason for their endurance was no doubt the 
want of a leader, and that was a potent reason. In the 
early difficulties of the reign the place of the leader of 
constitutional opposition was occasionally taken by the 
Earl of Chester, a man in whose conduct the desire ot 
rule was stronger than the love of liberty ; and after his 
death it was occupied with higher principles and nobler 
purposes by the Earl Marshall Richard. After Richard's 
death no great lay baron for a long time stood out from 
the rest as a leader. The bishops proclaimed their 
grievances and the oppressions of the court, but the 
bishops were forbidden by their order to take up arms 
against the king. The great earldoms of the former age 



CH. IX. Simon de Montfort. 1 8 1 

were extinct in spirit if not in title, and possibly the king 
may have found means to keep their modern representa- 
tives silent or inactive. The ffreat earldom of tt 

c> Menrj' s 

Leicester had been split in two, and one half, dynastic 
which bore the name of Leicester, was, at 
the beginning of the reign, in the king's hands, although 
claimed by the Montforts. The earldom of Chester 
came, on the extinction of the heirs, to the crown in 
1237; Essex and Hereford were held by one family; 
Cornwall by the king's brother; Salisbury by his 
cousin. Gloucester alone retained anything like its old 
importance, and the Earl of Gloucester could not stand 
alone. Henry was wise enough to see this, and so 
avoided the restoration of Chester by keeping it as a 
provision for one of his sons. It was probably with the 
like object that he connived at the marriage of his sister 
with Simon de Montfort, to whom the Leicester inheri- 
tance must in the end come ; and when the earldom of 
the Marshalls escheated he gave it to his half-brother. 
If all the great earldoms could be comfortably distributed 
among his near kinsmen the baronial party would be 
without its natural head, and might lie at his mercy. 
That this was a part of his plan we may infer from his 
treatment of the bishoprics. He no doubt thought that 
he had a safe hold on the clergy when his wife's uncle 
was made archbishop of Canterbury, his half-brother, 
Ethelmer . of Lusignan, bishop of Winchester, and ano- 
ther important bishopric, that of Hereford, was in the 
hands of a Provencal kinsman. Edward III., a hun- 
dred years after him, adopted somewhat the same plan 
of consolidating family power by marrying his sons to 
the heiresses of the earldoms ; and at an earlier period 
in the history of the empire the German duchies more 
than once take the form of a compact family party. 
Unfortunately, however, the plan has seldom answered: 



1 82 The Early Plantagenets. ch. ix. 

people can hate their relations perhaps more cordially 
than they can hate anyone else ; and in a generation or 
two, when personal hated is complicated with the rights 
of inheritance, wars between cousins are apt to become 
internecine. Even in the present reign we shall come 
upon one or two instances of this. One effect of this 
statecraft on Henry's part was to keep the constitu- 
tional party divided and headless; another was to pro- 
voke opposition amongst those in whom he might other- 
wise have trusted. His treatment of the Gascons was 
such as at one period to throw even his son Edward and 
his brother Richard into opposition ; and as early as 
1242 we have seen Earl Richard of Cornwall taking an 
important place in the baronial councils ; but the lead- 
ing and crowning instance is Simon de Montfort, the 
personal enemy, the leader of constitutional opposition, 
the national champion, whom Henry raised up for his 
own discomfiture as directly and as persistently as if he 
had had from the beginning that object in view. 

The opinions of historians have differed widely in 
drawing the characters of the two most influential men 
Richard of of this period. Richa rd, King of the R omans, 
Cornwall. g^ dignity which"~he attained in I2577the sE=~ 
cond son of John, must have been on any showing a man 
of more energy and enterprise than his brother Henry ; 
it is attested by his early achievements in war, by his 
crusade, and by the adventurous way in which he at- 
tempted and really maintained his hold on Germany. 
He was also a better manager; for whilst Henry was 
always hopelessly overwhelmed with debt, Richard was 
always amply provided with money, and able to lend his 
brother large sums, which kept him afloat for a time, but 
did not get him out of his difflculties. Richard had also 
much sounder ideas of policy, acting frequently with the 
baronial party, resisting and remonstrating against his 



cH. IX. Simon de Montfort, 183 

brother's foolish designs, and winning throughout both 
France and England no small reputation for political 
sagacity. In opposition to these favourable points must 
be set a strong public opinion existing at the time, and 
since constantly re-echoed both in England and in Ger- 
many. The English, disliking his attempts at foreign 
sovereignty, represented him as a foolish, extravagant, 
tricky man, who for the name of Emperor sacrificed his 
real interests and imperilled the interests of his country ; 
a man who would let the Germans delude him out of 
all his treasure and then come back to England and take 
the unpopular side, as he did in the barons' war. The 
Germans, who always treated the English kings as rich 
fools to be handled from time to time for their own profit, 
got out of him all they could in the way of money and 
privileges, and showed their gratitude by mocking him. 
A more careful view of his career leads to the conclusion 
that both his abilities and his success were underrated. 
He was certainly not a great sovereign, but the proba- 
bility is that, with the chances he had, he might have 
done very much worse. He was one of the very last 
of the Kings of the Romans who thought of building up 
the empire as distinct from their own dynastic power; 
who lavished what he had upon it instead of merely 
using the power and dignity which it gave him to in- 
crease the wealth of his own family. In respect to his 
conduct as an English earl we find him always acting 
as a mediator and arbitrator, never urging the king to 
his despotic and deceitful courses. If when the country 
was actually at war he threw in his lot with his brother, 
rather than with Simon de Montfort, whom he did not 
understand, but suspected and reasonably disliked, he 
can hardly be visited with severe blame. He was the 
wisest and most moderate, it would seem, of Henry's 
advisers; but Henry was not fond of being advised. 



1 84 The Early Plantagenets. ch. ix. 

Simon de Montfort was a very different man, and 
very different estimates have been formed of him. On 
Simon de o^^ side he is regarded as an almost inspired 
Montfort. Statesman, a scholar, a saint, a martyr ; on the 
other he is a mere adventurer, a demagogue, a man full of 
selfish ambitions and personal hatreds, a rebel, a traitor, 
a criminal. A short notice of his chief actions may in- 
dicate what reason there is for either, neither, or both 
of these estimates. Simon de Montfort was no doubt 
an adventurer, descended from a race of counts that 
had played for high stakes with very little capital, and 
had been persistently pushing into power for some cen- 
turies. His father was the scarcely less renowned Simon 
de Montfort, the persecutor of the Albigensian here- 
tics, who had, at the head of that cruel crusade, been 
made Count of Toulouse, and perished in making good 
his claims. The Counts of Evreux, his remoter ances- 
tors, had made their way into that position by a fortu- 
nate marriage as early as the time of Henry I. They 
had made a bold attempt in the time of Lewis VI. to 
claim the high stewardship of France ; in later times 
one of the family had held, in the right of his wife, the 
earldom of Gloucester after the death of Geoffrey de 
Mandeville and Hawisia. Earl Simon, the Crusader, 
was a nephew of the last Earl of Leicester of the house 
of Beaumont, on whose death John divided his earldom 
into, two, that of Winchester going to Saer de Ouincy 
i as co-heir, and that of Leicester to Simon de Montfort. 
[But that Simon, although he was Earl of Leicester, had 
I little to do with England; he was an enemy of John, 
i and the barons are said, at one time, to have thought 
i of calling him in as a deliverer. His crusade against 
ithe Albigenses was directed really against Raymond of 
Toulouse, who was John's brother-in-law ; and as John was 
never loth to keep the lands of his enemies in his own 



CH. IX. Shnon de Montfort. 185 

hands, the revenues of the earldom seldom found their 
way into the treasury of the Montforts, This Simon had 
four sons; Amalric, Count of Montfort, was the eldest, 
and the second Simon, the hero of the barons' war, was 
the youngest. Amalric, of course, was his father's heir, but 
he contented himself with his patrimony in France ; and 
the two intermediate brothers being now dead, Simon, 
according to Matthew Paris, attempted, at the Council 
of Bourges, in 1226 or 1227, to recover the county of 
Toulouse. Failing to do this, he came to England to see 
whether he could not get the earldom of Leicester, and 
his brother consented to make over to him such rights 
in it as he possessed. After some years he succeeded. 
Henry allowed the arrangement between the brothers to 
take effect, and gave Simon the honour of Leicester. He 
had already failed in two attempts to make himself a 
great position by marriage with the countesses of Flan- 
ders and Boulogne. In a third he was more successful ; 
Henry connived, as it was said, at a clandestine marriage 
between Simon and his sister Eleanor, the widow of the 
second William Marshall — an unlawful marriage, as she 
had taken a vow of widowhood — and soon after, in 
1239, gave him the title of Earl. Richard of Cornwall, 
and others of the baronage were exceedingly angry at 
this, and Henry himself in no long time quarrelled with 
his new brother-in-law, who had to leave England, and 
had some expense and trouble in obtaining the recog- 
nition of his marriage as lawful. 

For some years he appears to have been coolly treated, 
and perhaps nursed his wrongs. But up to this time 
there is little about him to distinguish him from the other 
foreigners with whom England swarmed. By what pro- 
cess he educated himself into the ideas and position of 
an English baron we have but little information to show. 
It is clear, however, that he did so ; that he had much 



}rS6 The Early Plantagenets. ch. ix. 

intercourse with the clergy, especially with that section 
which, with Bishop Grosseteste, was bent on resisting 
the royal exactions and papal usurpations ; that he de- 
voted much thought and care to the education of his 
children; and that when, in the parliament of 1244, the 
prelates and barons selected a committee to treat with 
the king, his name, with that of Earl Richard of Corn- 
wall, was among the first chosen. In his own earl- 
dom, nearly the only notice found of him is that he 
persecuted the Jews of Leicester, and this slight indi- 
cation may show that he had somewhat of his father's 
spirit— that some persecuting zeal was an ingredient in 
his peculiar form of piety. From this date we find him, 
however, employed more and more in public business, 
and for several years together commanding in Gascony, 
where the complaints of his severity and impolicy were pro- 
bably occasioned as much by Henry's deceitful treatment 
of his foreign adherents as by Simon's own fault. Of this, 
however, it is impossible to judge certainly ; we only know 
that the bitter feelings which existed between him and 
the king were constantly more and more embittered, and 
that Earl Richard, although sometimes he was obliged 
to take Simon's part, had the same personal antipathy, 
which grew greater and produced terrible results in the 
next generation. In Gascony, however, Simon must have 
gained a good deal of political experience ; and he was 
already by inherited talent and early training a highly 
accomplished soldier and tactician. 

Such was the man whom Henry III. had raised and 
trained to his own confusion : a brilliant, religious, en- 
terprising, experienced man, who had cultivated popu- 
larity ; and who although a foreigner, an adventurer, a man 
descended from high feudal parentage and an adept in all 
the lessons of feudal insubordination, had yet fitted him- 
self to be a leader of the English baronage in a crusade 



A. D. 1257- Simon de Mont fort. 187 

against tyranny. Earl Simon's greatness throws all the 
other actors into the shade, for Bishop Grosseteste, who 
if he had lived would no doubt have taken a great place 
in the story, died in 1253; and of the other prelates, 
besides Archbishop Boniface, the only one of much 
personal eminence at the time was Walter of Cantilupe, 
Bishop of Worcester. Of the barons the most eminent 
were Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and William 
of Ferrers, the last Earl of Derby of that house which 
had been engaged in every conspiracy and intrigue since 
the days of Stephen. 

The struggle opens at the parliament held at Mid- 
lent at Westminster, in 1257, when the king presented 
his son Edmund to the barons as King of Sicily, and 
announced that he had pledged the kingdom to the 
Pope for 140,000 marks. He demanded an aid, a tenth 
of all church revenue, and the income of all vacant 
benefices for five years. The clergy remonstrated. The 
ears of all tingled, says the historian, and their hearts 
died within them, but he succeeded in obtaining 52,000 
marks, and was encouraged to try again. This he did 
the next year, 1258, at a parliament held soon Parliament 
after Easter at London. This assembly met on °^ ^^sS- 
April 9, and continued until May 5. Everyone brought up 
his grievances ; the king insisted on having money. The 
Pope had pledged himself to the merchants, Henry had 
pledged himself to the Pope ; was all Christendom to 
be bankrupt ? The barons listened with impatience : at 
last tlie time was come for reform, and the king was 
obliged to yield. On May 2 he consented that a parlia- 
ment should be called at Oxford within a month after 
Whitsuntide, and that then and there a commission of 
twenty-four persons should be constituted, twelve mem- 
bers of the royal council already chosen and twelve 
elected by the barons ; then if the barons would do 



1 88 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1257. 

their best to get the king out of his difficulties by a 
pecuniary aid, he would, with the advice of these twenty- 
four, draw up measures for the reform of the state of 
the kingdom, the royal household, and the Church. It 
will be remembered that in 12 15 the execution of the 
articles of Magna Carta was committed to twenty-five 
barons, with power to constrain the king to make the 
necessary reforms : in this case the arrangement is 
somewhat different, although the method of proceeding 
is not quite dissimilar, and both alike afforded prece- 
dents for that superseding of the royal authority by a 
commission of government which we find in the reigns 
of Edward 11. and Richard II. 

At Oxford the parliament met on June 11, and the 
barons presented a long list of grievances which they 
Parliament insistcd should be reformed. If this list be 
of Oxford. compared with the list of grievances on which 
Magna Carta was drawn up, it will be found that 
many points are common to the two documents. We may 
thus infer that, notwithstanding the constant confirma- 
tions of the charters which were issued by the king, the 
observance of them was evaded by violence or by chica- 
nery ; that the king enforced some of the most offensive 
feudal rights, and that his officers found little check on 
their exactions. Castles had been multiplied, the itinerant 
judges had made use of their office to exact large sums 
in the shape of fines, and the sheriffs had oppressed the 
country in the same way. English fortresses had been 
placed in the hands of foreigners, and the forest laws 
had been disregarded . A great number of other evil cus- 
toms are now recounted. But, strange to say, there is no 
proposal to restore the missing articles of the Charter 
of Runnymede, by which taxation without the consent 
of the national council is forbidden. 

These grievances were to be redressed before the end 



A. D. 1258. Simon de Moiitfort. 189 

of the year ; and the ahens were to be removed at once 
from all places of trust. But this was not the most critical 
part of the business. The Provisions of Oxford, as 
they were called, were intended to be much more than 
an enforcement of Magna Carta; a body of Provisions 
twenty-four was chosen, twelve by the king, "^ Oxford, 
twelve by the earls and barons, to reform the grievances ; 
of the king's twelve the most eminent were his three 
half-brothers, the Lusignans, his nephew Henry of 
Cornwall, and the Earls of Warenne and Warwick; 
of the baronial twelve the chief were the Bishop of 
Worcester, the Earls of Leicester, Gloucester, and Here- 
ford, Roger Mortimer, Hugh Bigot, and Hugh le Des- 
penser. A next step was to restore the three great 
dignities of the administration which had been so long 
in abeyance; Hugh Bigot was made justiciar, but the 
great seal still remained in the hands of a keeper who 
must be supposed to have taken the oath of chancel- 
lor. The king was then provided with a council of 
fifteen advisers : each of the two twelves selected two 
out of the other twelve, and these four nominated 
the fifteen, subject to the approval of the whole twenty- 
four. The chiefs of this permanent council were the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Worcester, 
and the Earls of Gloucester, and Leicester. The fifteen 
were to hold three annual sessions, or parliaments, 
in February, June, and October ; and with them the 
barons were to negotiate through another committee of 
twelve. There was another body still, also consisting of 
twenty-four members, who had the special task of nego- 
tiating the financial aids ; and the original twenty-four 
were empowered to undertake the reform of the Church. 
Of course these several committees contained very much 
the same elements, the Earls of Leicester, Gloucester, 
and Norfolk, Roger Mortimer, and others being elected to 



190 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1259. 

each. It was a cumbrous arrangement, and scarcely 
likely to be permanent, but was accepted with great 
solemnity. Everybody was sworn to obey, and several 
minor measures were ordered to give security to the new 
constitution. It is this framework of government, the 
permanent council of fifteen, the three annual parliaments, 
the representation of the community of the realm through 
twelve representative barons, that is historically known 
as the Constitution of the Provisions of Oxford. Henry 
was again and again forced to swear to it, and to proclaim 
it throughout the country. The grievances of the barons 
were met by a set of ordinances called the Provisions of 
Westminster, which were produced after some trouble 
in October 1259. Before the scheme had begun to work 
the foreign favourites and kinsmen fled from the court 
and were allowed to quit the country with some scanty 
remnant of their ill-gotten gains. Their departure left 
the royalist members of the new administration in a 
hopeless minority. 

England had now, it would appear, adopted a new 
form of government, but it must have been already suffi- 
T^- . ciently clear that so many rival interests and 

JJisunion •' J 

among the ambitious leaders would not work together, 
that Henry would avail himself of the first 
pretext for repudiating his promises, and that a civil 
war would almost certainly follow. The first year of 
this provisional government passed away quietly. The 
King of the Romans, who returned from Germany in 
January 1259, was obliged to swear to the provisions. 
In November Henry went to France, returning in April 
1260. Immediately on his return he began to intrigue 
for the overthrow of the government, sent for absolution 
to Rome, and prepared for war. Edward, his eldest son, 
tried to prevent him from breaking his word, but before 
the king had begun the contest the two great earls had 



A. D, 1263. Sinioii de Montfort. 191 

quarrelled : Gloucester could not bear Leicester, Leicester 
could not bear a rival. A general reconciliation was the 
prelude as usual to a general struggle. In February 
1 26 1 Henry repudiated his oath, and seized the Tower. 
In June he produced a papal Bull which absolved him 
from his oath to observe the Provisions. The chiefs of 
the government, Leicester and Gloucester, took up arms, 
but they avoided a battle. The summer was occupied 
with preparations for a struggle, and peace was made 
in the winter. In 1262 Henry went again to France for 
six months, and on his return again swore to the Provi- 
sions; that year the Earl of Gloucester died, and Edward 
began to draw nearer to his father. Simon was without 
a rival, and no doubt created in Edward that spirit of 
jealous mistrust which never again left him. The next 
year was one of open war. The young Earl xhe Barons' 
of Gloucester refused to swear allegiance to ^'^^' ^^^s- 
Edward ; Simon insisted that the pertinacious ahens 
should be again expelled. Twice if not three times in 
this year Henry was forced to confirm the Provisions ; 
but Edward saw that they had now become a mere form 
under which the sovereignty of Simon de Montfort was 
scarcely hidden ; and the increasing conviction of this 
induced the barons to refer the whole question to the arbi- 
tration of Lewis IX. of France. This was Award of 
done on December 16, 1263. An examination Lewis IX. 
of the names of the barons which appear in the two lists of 
sureties who undertake the carrying out of this arbitration 
shows that Simon de Montfort had now lost some of his 
most important allies. The young Earl of Gloucester ap- 
pears in neither hst, but the Earls of Norfolk and Here- 
ford, Hugh Bigot, and Roger Mortimer are now on the 
king's side, and no earl except Leicester himself appears in 
the baronial party, the foremost layman there being Hugh 
le Despenser, the justiciar. There can be no doubt that 



192 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1263. 

since the outbreak of the war much moral weight had fallen 
to the royalists, and it seems most probable that Earl 
Simon had rather offended than propitiated the men who 
regarded themselves as his equals. The conduct of the 
barons after the award of Lewis IX. seems to place them 
in the wrong, and to show either that Simon de Mont- 
fort's views had developed, under the late changes, in the 
direction of personal ambition and selfish ends, or that 
other causes were at work of which we have no informa- 
tion. The barons were so distinctly justified in their first 
proceedings that an equitable consideration cannot be 
refused to their later difficulties. Both parties, however, 
equally bound themselves to abide by the arbitration. 

Henry took the wise course of being personally pre- 
sent on the occasion and taking his son Edward with 
him. Some of the barons also appeared in person, but 
not the Earl of Leicester, who was supporting the Welsh 
princes in their war with Mortimer, a method of con- 
tinuing the struggle which was neither honest nor pa- 
triotic. At Amiens Lewis heard the cause, and did not 
long hesitate about his answer, which was delivered on 
January 23, 1264. By this award the King of France 
entirely annulled the Provisions of Oxford, and all en- 
gagements which had been made respecting them. Not 
content with doing this in general terms, he forbade the 
making of new statutes, as proposed and carried out in 
the Provisions of Westminster, ordered the restoration of 
the royal castles to the king, restored to him the power 
of nominating the officers of state and the sheriffs, the 
nomination of whom had been withdrawn from him by 
the Provisions of Oxford; he annulled the order that 
natives of England alone should govern the realm of 
England, and added that the king should have full and 
free power in his kingdom as he had had in time past. 
All this was in the king's favour. The arbitrator, how- 



A.D. 1263. Simon de Montfort, 193 

ever, added that all the charters issued before the time 
of the Provisions should hold good, and that all parties 
should condone enmities and injuries arising from the 
late troubles. 

Lewis mentions as his chief motive for thus giving 
the verdict practically in the king's favour the fact that 
the Provisions had already been annulled by Motives for 
the Pope, and the parties bound by them the decision 

\ I 1 . , T^ of the 

released from their oaths. But we cannot French 
suppose that he was entirely guided by this ^^"^' 
consideration ; it is probable that he did not understand 
the limits which the growth of constitutional life had 
put upon the exercise of royal power as early as Magna 
Carta, or the shameless way in which Henry had broken 
his engagements. He may, very reasonably, have re- 
garded England as much the same sort of country as his 
own, and have seen in the strengthening of the royal 
power — a thing absolutely necessary in France at the 
time — a measure as necessary for England. He may 
have been moved by Henry's own pleadings, or by the 
more weighty if more moderate statements which we can 
imagine were laid before him by Edward. And the care 
that he shows for the restoration of peace and good feeling 
may well be interpreted to prove that, although his award 
was more favourable to the one party than to the other, 
he yet did not think the defeated party entirely in the 
wrong. 

The award, however, was entirely in favour of the 
crown. The new form of government was already giving 
way, and both parties might have and ought Ejects of 
to have submitted to the sentence. Henry the award 
had had a severe lesson, and might not offend 
again ; the baronage had had their chance, and had been 
found wanting both in unity of aim and in administra- 
tive power. Neither party, however, acquiesced in the 

-M. H. O 



194 The Early Plantagenets. a.d, 1264. 

admonition, and each of course laid on the other the 
blame of disregarding a judgment by which both had 
sworn to stand. At first the war was continued on the 
Welsh marches principally ; Edward's forces assisting 
Mortimer, and Montfort continuing to support Llewelyn, 
the Prince of Wales, his opponent. But when the king 
returned from France, as he did in February, the struggle 
became general. 

The responsibility for this rests unquestionably with 
Simon de Montfort ; how far he was justified by the great- 
Milita ^^^^ °^ ^^^ necessity is another question. He 

successes of had the sympathy of the Londoners, which 
of^Simon de was probably shared by the burghers of the 
Montfort. great towns, that of the clergy, except those 
who were led by the Pope entirely, of the universities, and 
of the great body of the people. The barons by themselves 
would have treated with the king ; they would probably 
have thrown over Earl Simon, if only they could have 
got rid of the foreigners and had England for the 
English. On March 31, however, whilst negotiations 
were proceeding, the Londoners broke into riot against 
the king, and he in his anger put an end to the consulta- 
tion. The war began favourably for the king; North- 
ampton was taken, Nottingham opened her gates, and 
Tutbury, the castle of the Ferrers, surrendered to Ed- 
ward. Earl Simon had his successes too, and captured 
Warwick. Both parties then turned southwards. Earl 
Simon besieged Rochester, the king marched to reheve it. 
Henry also took Tunbridge,the Earl of Gloucester's castle, 
for the young Earl of Gloucester was now on the barons' 
side; then he collected his forces at Lewes, where he 
arrived in the first week of May. 

Lewes castle belonged to the Earl of Warenne, who 
had throughout stood on the king's side. The barons also 
collected their host in the immediate neighbourhood ; 



A.D. 1264. Simon de Montfort. 195 

but before fighting they made one bid for peace. The 
two bishops who were the chief political advisers of the 
barons — the Bishops of Worcester and London — brought 
the proposition to the king : they would give 
50,000 marks in payment for damages done Lewel° 
in the late struggle, if he would confirm the Victory of 

*° ' the Barons. 

Provisions of Oxford. The offer was sealed 
by the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester, and dated on 
May 13. The king returned an answer of defiance, which 
was accompanied by a formal challenge on the part of 
the King of the Romans, Edward, and the rest of the 
royalist barons. No time was lost ; on the very next 
day the battle was fought, and fortune declared against 
the king. He had the larger force, but all the skill, care, 
and earnestness w^as on the side of the barons. Simon, 
who had broken his leg a few months before — an acci- 
dent which prevented him from going to meet the King 
of France at Amiens — had been obliged to use a carriage 
during the late marches ; he now posted his carriage in a 
conspicuous place, and himself went elsewhere. Edward, 
thinking that if he could capture the earl the struggle 
would be over, attacked the post where the carriage was 
seen, routed and pursued the defenders, and going too far 
in pursuit, left his father exposed to the attack of the earl. 
King Henry was a brave man, but of course no general, 
for he had never seen anything like real war before. He 
defended himself stoutly; two horses were killed under 
him, and he was wounded and bruised by the swords 
and maces of his adversaries, who were in close hand-to- 
hand combat. When he had lost most of his immediate 
retainers he retreated into the priory of Lewes. The 
King of the Romans, who had commanded the centre of 
the royal army, was already compelled to retreat, and, 
whilst Henry was still struggling, had been taken cap- 
tive in a windmill, which made the adversaries very 



196 The Early Plantagenets. a. d, 1264. 

merry. A general rout followed. The baronial party 
was victorious long before Edward returned from his 
unfortunate pursuit, and many of the king's most power- 
ful friends secured themselves by flight. The next day 
an arbitration was determined on, called the Mise of 
Lewes, and the king gave himself and his son into the 
bands of Simon, who, from that time to the end of the 
struggle in the next year, ruled in the king's name. 

The Mise of Lewes contained seven articles, the most 
important of which prescribed the employment of native 
The Mise of counsellors, and bound the king to act by the 
Lewes. advice of the council which would be provided 

for him. Measures were also taken for obtaining a new 
arbitration. Thus England for the second time within 
seven years passed under a new constitution. The system 
devised at the Council of Oxford in 1258 was not revived, 
but a parliament was called for June 22, to devise or 
ratify a new scheme. This assembly comprised four 
knights from each shire, as well as the ordinary elements, 
the bishops and abbots, earls and barons, who formed the 
usual parliament. In it the new form of government was 
drawn up. This time the king was bound to act by the 
advice of nine counsellors. Three electors or nominators 
were first to be chosen — whether by the whole body of the 
parliament or by the barons only, it is not said ; and these 
three were to name the nine. Of the nine three were to 
be in constant attendance on the king, and his sovereign 
authority was, in fact, to be exercised by and through 
them. They were to nominate the great functionaries 
of the state and the other ministers whose appointment 
had before rested with the king, and their authority was 
to last until all the points of controversy were settled by 
the arbitration provided in the Mise of Lewes. The 
three electors chosen were the Earls of Leicester and 
Gloucester and the Bishop of Chichester, Stephen 



A.D. 1265. Simon de Montfort. 197 

Berksted, a man who comes into prominence now for 
the first time, but who was probably the agent of the 
constitutional party among the clergy, which had been 
hitherto represented by the Bishop of Worcester. 

These men governed England until the battle of 
Evesham. But their reign was not an easy or peaceful 
one. The Pope was still zealous for Henry, conduct of 
and left no means untried by which the bishops the new Go- 
might be detached from the barons. The 
queen collected a great army in France and prepared to 
invade England, assisted by the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, her uncle, and all the English refugees who had 
come under the rod of Earl Simon. Mortimer also made 
an attempt to prolong the state of war on the border. 
Nothing, however, came of these preparations during this 
year : the new government professed itself to be provi- 
sional, and negotiations were resumed, by which the king 
of France, now better informed, was to settle all contro- 
versies. In December a summons went forth for a new 
parliament. 

This is the famous parliament, as it is called, of 
Simon de Montfort, the first assembly of the sort to 
which representatives of the borough towns xheParlia- 
were called ; and thus to some extent forms a ment of 
landmark in English history. It was not made Montfort. 
a precedent, and in fact it is not till thirty 
years after that the representatives of the towns begin 
regularly to sit in parliament ; but it is nevertheless a 
very notable date. Nor was the assembly itself what 
would be called a full and free parliament, only those 
persons being summoned who were favourable to the 
new regime ; but five earls and eighteen barons, and 
an overwhelming number of the lower clergy, knights, 
and burghers, who were of course supporters of Earl 
Simon. It met on January 20, 1265, and did not effect 



198 The Early Plantagenets. a. d, 1265, 

much. Edward, however, was allowed to make terms for 
his liberation, and Simon secured for himself and his 
family the earldom of Chester, giving up to Edward, 
however, other estates by way of exchange. The libera- 
tion of Edward, who was released on the condition of 
surrendering his castles, staying for three years in 
England and keeping the peace, led immediately to 
the earl's overthrow. Edward was to live under sur- 
veillance at Hereford — far too near the Mortimers and 
the Welsh border. This was carried out ; Edward was 
liberated on March 10. 

Already, however, dissensions were springing up. Earl 
Simon's sons, who did very little credit to his instructions. 
Impolicy of ^nd on wliom perhaps some of the blame 
^.^'■^ , may rest of which otherwise it is impossible 

bimon s ■' ^ 

sons. to acquit their father, managed to offend the 

Earl of Gloucester. They challenged the Clares to a 
tournament at Dunstable. When they were ready and 
already angry and prepared to turn the festive meeting 
into a battle, it was suddenly stopped by the king or by 
Earl Simon, acting in his name. Gloucester and his 
kinsmen deemed themselves insulted, and immediately 
began to negotiate with the Mortimers; and, when hos- 
tilities were just beginning, Edward escaped from his 
honourable keeping at Hereford and joined the party. 

From this point action is rapid. Simon, with the 
king in his train, marched into the West, and advanced 
Battle of into South Wales. Edward and Gloucester, 
D^^th^of joined by Mortimer, mustered their adherents 
Earl Simon, in the Cheshire and Shropshire country, and 
then rushed down by way of Worcester on the town of 
Gloucester, which surrendered on June 29, thus cutting off 
the earl's return to England. The younger Simon de 
Montfort, the earl's second son, was summoned to his 
father's aid, came up from Pevensey, which he was besieg- 



A. D. 1267. Simon de Montfort. 199 

ing, plundered Winchester, and took up his position at 
Kenilworth. His father meantime had got back to 
Hereford and formed a plan for surrounding Edward. 
Edward, however, had now learned vigilance and caution. 
He took the initiative, succeeded in routing the young 
Simon and nearly capturing Kenilworth, and thus turned 
the tables on the earl. Simon marched on to Evesham, 
expecting to meet his son ; instead of his son he met his 
nephew ; and on August 4 the battle fought there reversed 
the judgment of Lewes. There the great earl fell, and 
with him Hugh le Despenser, the barons' justiciar, 
fighting bravely, but without much hope. 

The interest of the reign, and indeed its importance, 
ends here. Simon is the hero of the latter part of it, 
and the death of Simon closes it, although Dictum de 
the king reigns for seven years longer. The Kenilworth. 
war does not end here : the remnant of the baronial 
party held out at Kenilworth until October 1266, There 
the last supporters of Earl Simon, the men whose atti- 
tude towards Henry was unpardonable, had made their 
stand. The final agreement which was drawn up at 
the siege, and which is called the Dictum de Kenilworth, 
was intended to settle all differences, and for the most 
part it did so, by allowing those who had incurred the 
penalty of forfeiture to redeem their possessions by fines. 
But until the end of 1267 there were constant outbreaks. 
The Isle of Ely was made the refuge of one set, just as 
it had been two hundred years before, in the time of 
the Conqueror. The Earl of Gloucester raised the 
banner of revolt, declaring that the king was dealing 
too hardly with the victims, and the Londoners were 
very loth indeed to lose the power and advantages 
which they had secured by their alliance with Simon. 
But gradually all the storm subsided. In the parlia- 
ment of Marlborough, in November 1267, the king re- 



200 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1268-72. 

newed the Provisions of Westminster of 1259, by which 
the most vakiable legal reforms of the constitutional 
party became embodied in statutes. In 1268 the papal 
legate held a council for the permanent maintenance of 
peace, and Edward, with many of the leading nobles, 
took the Cross. In 1270 they went on Crusade, and the 
Londoners were restored to favour. In December 1271 
the King of the Romans died, broken-hearted at the 
loss of his son Henry, who was murdered by the Mont- 
forts at Viterbo. In 1272, on November 16, Henry III. 
Death of died ; and so completely was the kingdom 
Henry III. then at pcacc, that Edward, although far away 
from England, was at once proclaimed king, and oaths 
of fealty were taken to him in his absence. 

The long struggle had not yet come to an end : more 
than twenty years were yet to elapse before Edward I. 
The recognised the fundamental justice of the 

struggle claims of his subjects, and admitted all the 

estates to that full and equal share in the 
action of the country which lies at the basis of our 
national constitution. We may perhaps ask whether 
Simon de Montfort deserves that character of a hero, the 
hero of mediaeval history, which is commonly attributed 
to him. We can only attempt to realise the motives 
that swayed him. There is no doubt that he was a 
great man, a much greater man as he was a much better 
and wiser man than Henry, and perhaps better, cer- 
tainly wiser and greater, than such men as Gloucester. 
But that he was absolutely a patriot, or absolutely wise 
and good, it is needless to affirm and impossible to 
prove ; nor is it necessary that in attempting to estimate 
his personal eminence we are to look at him through the 
medium of his political glories. There is no question that 
the objects which were aimed at by the baronial policy 
were necessary, and the attainment of them, when they 



A. D. 1272. Simon de Montf or t. 201 

were attained, was beneficial. It is possible, though not 
probable, that had Simon never existed those objects 
would never have been attained ; also it is quite possible 
that if he had not forced on rebellion the objects might 
have been attained long before they were. That we can- 
not decide. But there are three points to be considered. 
Were the aims of the barons beneficial? Was Simon a 
great and good man ? Were all the motives of his party 
and the means taken to realise them good and justifiable ? 
To the first two questions unhesitatingly we may answer, 
yes. The barons wanted only what was fair. Simon de 
Montfort was a great and good man. The third ques- 
tion is not so easy. It is better to allow that there were 
mixed motives and unjustifiable expedients. Simon was 
not successful as an administrator, he could not maintain 
peace even when he had the whole kingdom at his feet. 
His expedient for governing was fanciful and cumbrous. 
His own conduct in his elevation was not quite free from 
the charge of rapacity. He stands out best and most 
grandly in comparison with the meanness with which he 
was surrounded — the paltry, faithless king, the selfish 
and unscrupulous baronage. He is relatively great ; but 
he is not perfect. He is scarcely a patriot — a foreigner 
could hardly be expected to be so. He is somewhat 
more distinctly a hero, but he never quite rids himself 
of the character of the adventurer. 



202 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1272. 



CHAPTER X. 

EDWARD I. 

Position and character of Edward — The Crusade — The Accession — 
The Conquest of Wales — Edward's legal reforms — Financial 
system — Growth of Parliament. 

If ever king came to his throne with a distinct under- 
standing of the work that lay before him, that king must 
Political have been Edward I. The lessons of the last 

education of fifteen years of his father's reign had not been 
thrown away upon him. He had been trained 
for the task of reigning, as well by his father's mistakes 
and misgovernment as by the means which the nation, 
under Earl Simon and the barons, had taken to remedy 
the evils which those mistakes and misgovernment had 
produced. He must have known that England required 
sound laws and strong administration, an adequate organi- 
sation for national defence, and effective methods for pre- 
serving internal peace; and the history of the late reign must 
have taught him not only that without the sympathy and 
CO' operation of the nation at large these ends could not be 
secured, but that the nation was itself ready, educated 
sufficiently and united sufficiently, to give the aid that he 
required. Earl Simon and his companions had perished, 
but the great end of their work had been achieved : they 
had made it impossible for a king again to rule as John 
had ruled, and as Henry had tried to rule. They had 
drawn out a plan of reform in the laws which Henry 
himself had accepted after their death, although he had 
struggled against it and evaded it whilst they lived; for 
most of the articles which had been forced upon him at 



A.D. 1272. Edward I. 203 

Oxford in 1258, and at Westminster in 1259, he had re- 
enacted in the great statute of Marlborough, in 1267. 
He had reformed his expenditure ; he had observed 
the constitutional rule of not taxing without the con- 
sent of the national council ; he had even on some 
occasions called together representatives of the towns 
and counties, as Simon had done, although he had not so 
far imitated his rival as to make them an integral part of 
his Parliament. And thus the great contest had imme- 
diate effects even under Henry. 

Edward had learned the deeper lessons ; he had con- 
ceived the desire of satisfying the more essential needs 
of his people. Hence, perhaps, in part, his Motives de- 
willingness to go on the Crusade. He knew termining 

1 ■ 1 1 -I ■ • 1 , Edward's 

that he had made enemies m the late war; a Crusade. 
few years would heal the old wounds. He knew that the 
land was exhausted ; a few years' rest would give it time 
to recruit. If he were likely to be the cause of unrest, he 
was better away; and even if he should not return until 
he returned as king, he might begin his new career less 
hampered than he would otherwise have been by the 
policy of his father. 

But Edward was qualified to do far more than merely 
restore the strength and energy of his fainting people ; 
he was fitted to start and guide them on a new ^^ 

° Edwards 

path of progress. He seems to have possessed, English 
with his English name, the desire, which he ^° ^'^^' 
certainly- did not inherit, of being an English king ; of 
putting himself at the head of his English people to make 
England a great power in Christendom. His aim no 
doubt was ta secure that place for his descendants, not, 
as Henry II. had done it, simply by founding a great 
family inheritance of states scattered and divided, but as 
the true king of a people strong in the feeling of national 
unity, bound together by good laws, but more so by a 



204 '^^^^ Early Plantagenets. a.d, 1272. 

sense of national identity, an intelligent participation in 
all national designs. The restoration of law and order, 
the determination that the English crown should be su- 
preme within the British isles, the assertion and realisa- 
tion of the idea that the king should work as the leader 
and spokesman of a nation that could enter into his plans 
and take a share of his responsibilities — these thoughts 
must have been more or less before Edward's mind from 
the beginning of his reign. Very possibly he foresaw 
little of the exact path in which he was going to walk; 
the exact points of legal reform, the opportunities for con- 
quest, the exigencies in, which he would have to act for 
the execution of his great designs, no doubt broke gra- 
dually on his view as he proceeded. He had still some- 
thing to unlearn as well as something to learn. If in 
spirit he was English, he was in education and by asso- 
ciation French; if he was to be a great national king, 
Edward' ^^^ ^^^ '\^Q.2. of kingship had too much of an 
idea of inherited form, a form which it did not surren- 

ings ip. ^^^ without a struggle. His greatness was 
not without an element which sets it far above all the 
greatness that arises from mere success; he had to learn, 
and he learned, to rule himself, to cast away his own 
cherished idea of reigning, and faithfully and honourably 
abide by the conditions which, although forced upon him, 
he saw at last were needed for the true realisation of 
his character as a national king. He was not free from 
faults; it is no small part of his grandeur that, in a nature 
so strong as his, and with temptations so powerful as those 
which were presented to him, those faults had so little 
sway. Of an eminently legal mind, he was too apt to 
take captious advantage of his legal position, somewhat 
prone to evade responsibilities to which the letter of the 
law did not bind him. This weakness was the source of 
all his mistakes and the cause of all his failures ; but this 



A.D. 1272. Edward I. 205 

was all. His mistakes were few, and his failures fewer 
still. Yet, as we shall see, he did not realise all that he 
hoped, nor was his actual contribution to national pro- 
gress exactly what he designed. There are dark lines in 
his history as well as bright ones. Of his schemes some 
were too early, some too late for success ; and in some 
points he drew the outline rather than built the fabric 
that was to last. Still his reign is a great era ; he is the 
great lawgiver, the great politician, the great organiser 
of the mediseval English polity. 

Edward was thirty-three years old at the time of his 
father^s death. He had been for eighteen years a married 
man ; his wife, Eleanor of Castille, was the crusade f 
sister of that Alfonso the Wise who had been Prince 
the competitor of Richard of Cornwall for the 
imperial crown, a noble and faithful lady. He himself 
was a tall, strong man, an adept in all knightly accom- 
plishments, brave to rashness, and now skilled and ex- 
perienced in war. His crusade had not been a successful 
one. Late in starting, he had reached the African coast 
in the autumn of 1270, to find Lewis IX. dead, and the 
hopes of the pilgrims already waning. After spending the 
winter in Sicily, he had, in May 1 271, gone on, like Richard 
Coeur de Lion, to Acre, and had spent more than a year in 
an attempt to retrieve the fortunes of the Frank kingdom. 
It was quite in vain. Mutual jealousies and universal 
mistrust had eaten out the heart of the Crusaders. A few 
dashing exploits, and a few almost wanton inroads, could 
do little more than exasperate the hatred of the Moslem. 
Edward played his part as a knight, but he had neither 
force nor opportunity to do more. Still he made himself 
feared; and an attempt at assassination in June 1272, 
warned him of the risks he was running. An emissary of 
the Sultan Bibars struck him in his tent. The weapon 
was poisoned, it was said, and the story was told and be- 



2o6 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1273. 

lieved, that his faithful queen, who had followed him in 
his pilgrimage, had sucked the poison from the wound. 
Two months later he sailed homewards, thoroughly dis- 
appointed, and heavily burdened with the cost of his ex- 
Edward's pedition. He was slowly proceeding on his 
theEngUsh Way, when, at Capua, in January 1273, he re- 
crown, ceived the news of his father's death and of 
the death of his eldest son John, a boy of six. Quickening 
his pace, he went on at once to Rome, visited the Pope at 
Orvieto, and crossed by the Mont Cenis pass to Lyons ; 
thence to Paris, where he did homage to King Phihp III. 
for his French provinces \ and then into Gascony, where 
he was delayed for another year before he could come to 
England to be crowned. 

England was still at rest. The royal dignity of Henry 
HI. passed on at once to his son. There was no formal 

. . interregnum such as had always occurred be- 

tion of the fore, between the death of the old king and 
dunn ""^ the coronation of the new. Edward was pro- 
Edward's claimed without being waited for. The king's 
peace was maintained by the royal council, and 
the thjee. .ministers to whom, before he started, he had 
committed ihe defence of his private interests, under- 
took to govern England in his stead. Archbishop Giffard 
of York, Roger Mortimer, the great lord of the Welsh 
Marches, who had helped him so well in 1265, and Robert 
Burnell, his confidential chaplain, the man who was to 
be his prime minister during half his reign, acted as 
regents in his place, and were at once recognised by the 
baronage and nation as his agents. Competitor there was 
none. Gilbert of Gloucester, the brilliant and somewhat 
erratic earl who had tried to act as arbiter in the last 
scenes of the barons' war, and had lost the confidence of 
both parties, had sworn to King Henry on his deathbed 
that he would maintain the rights of Edward. He, as 



A.D. 1274-5. Edward I. 207 

the first baron of the kingdom, took the oath of allegiance 
to the new king at his father's funeral. Early in 1273 3- 
great assembly of all estates of the realm, an assembly 
not only of barons^ and prelates, but of knightly repre- 
sentatives of the shires and citizens deputed by every city, 
met at Westminster, and bound themselves by the same 
oath. One or two faint reports of local tumult served 
only to mark the profoundness of the general peace. The 
government worked in quiet; even money was raised 
without much murmuring. 

On August 2, 1274, Edward I. landed at Dover, and 
on the 19th he was crowned. At once the work of his 
reign began. He was a warrior and a lawgiver Coronation 
by nature, education, and opportunity ; the °^ Edward, 
exigencies of the time made him a financier also; and 
the occasion speedily arose for him to display his powers 
in each capacity. 

The princes of North Wales had long been a sharp 
thorn in the side of England. Neither force nor friendly 
alliance had been strong enough to keep them Turbulence 
quiet. The love of independence, the inherit- %^^\ 
ance of proud, although illusory traditions, the princes. 
attachment of an affectionate people, the possession of 
remote mountain fastnesses, the antipathy as strongly 
felt towards the Norman as it had been towards the 
Saxon, combined to prevent either peace or submission. 
All the other races had combined on the soil of Britain, 
the Welsh would not. The demands of feudal homage 
made by the kings of England were evaded or repudiated; 
the intermarriages by which Henry II. and John had 
tried to help on a national agreement had in every case 
failed. In every internal difficulty of English politics the 
Welsh princes had done their best to embarrass the 
action of the kings ; they had intrigued with every aspi- 
rant for power, had been in league with every rebel. At 



2o8 The Early Plaiitagenets. a.d. 1276. 

the beginning of the reign of Henry III. they had con- 
spired with Falkes de Breaute against the Marshalls ; at 
the close of it they were in intimate aUiance with the 
Montforts. Not only so ; the necessity of guarding the 
Welsh border had caused the English kings to found 
on the March a number of feudal lordships, which were 
privileged to exercise almost sovereign jurisdictions, and 
exempted from the common operation of the English law. 
The Mortimers at Chirk and Wigmore, the Bohuns at 
Hereford and Brecon, the Marshalls at Pembroke, and the 
Clares in Glamorgan, were out of the reach of the king, and 
often turned against one another the arms which had 
been given them to overawe the Welsh. There they had 
an open ground for combats which they could not wage 
where English law was strong. So long as the Welsh were 
left free to rebel the Marchers must be left free to fight. 
Edward had long known this. He too had been put 
in the position of a Marcher. His father had given him, 
Rebellion of in 1 254, a great territory in Wales, between 
Prince'of' ^^^ ^nd Conway, and into it he had tried, 
North with signal ill success, to introduce English 

his brother laws. He probably knew that one of his 
David. greatest tasks, when he came to the crown, 

would be this. And he had not to wait for his opportunity. 
Llewelyn, the prince of North Wales, had, by the assist- 
ance given to Simon de Montfort, earned as his reward 
a recognition of his independence, subject only to the 
ancient feudal obligations. All the advantages won during 
the early years of Henry HI. had been thus surrendered. 
When the tide turned Llewelyn had done homage to 
Henry ; but when he was invited, in 1273, to perform the 
usual service to the new king, he refused ; and again, in 
1274 and 1275, he evaded the royal summons. In 1276, 
under the joint pressure of excommunication and a great 
army which Edward brought against him, he made a 



A.D. 1277-82. Edward I. 209 

formal submission ; performed the homage, and received, 
as a pledge of amity, the hand of Eleanor de Montfort 
in marriage. But Eleanor, although she was Edward's 
cousin, was Earl Simon's daughter, and scarcely qualified 
to be a peacemaker. Another adviser of rebellion was 
found in Llewelyn's brother David, who had hitherto 
taken part with the English, and had received special 
favours and promotion from Edward himself. The re- 
conciliation of Edward and Llewelyn had put an end to 
his hopes of supplanting his brother, and he had drawn 
closer to him, in order to entangle him in a rebellion for 
which he was always ready. The peace made in 1277 
lasted about four years. In 1282 the brothers rose, 
seized the border castles of Hawarden, Flint, and Rhudd- 
lan, and captured the Justiciar of Wales, Roger Clifford. 
Edward saw then that his time was come. He marched 
into North Wales, carrying with him the courts of law and 
the exchequer, and transferring the seat of government 
for the time to Shrewsbury. He left nothing undone that 
might give the expedition the character of a national 
effort. He collected forces on all sides ; he assembled 
the estates of the realm, clergy, lords, and commons, and 
prevailed on them to furnish liberal supplies ; he obtained 
sentence of excommunication from the Archbishop of 
Canterbury. The Welsh made a brave defence, and, had 
it not been for thQ almost accidental capture and murder 
of Llewelyn in December, England might have found 
the task too hard for her. The death of Llewelyn, how- 
ever, and the capture of David in the following June, 
deprived the Welsh of their leaders, and they submitted. 
Edward began forthwith his work of consolidation. 
David, as a traitor to his feudal lord, a conspirator 
against his benefactor, a blasphemer of God, Conquest of 
and a murderer, was tried by the king's judges Wales. 
at Shrewsbury and sentenced to a terrible death, the details 

M. H. * P 



2 Id The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1284. 

of which were apportioned according to the articles of the 
accusation. Justicesatisfied, Edward devoted himself to the 
securing of his conquest; in 1284 he published at Rhudd- 
Statute of Ian a statute, called the Statute of Wales, 
Wales. which was intended to introduce the laws and 

customs of England, and to reform the administration of 
that country altogether on the English system. The pro- 
cess was a slow one ; the Welsh retained their ancient 
common law and their national spirit; the administrative 
powers were weak and not far-reaching; the sway of the 
lords Marchers was suffered to continue ; and, although 
assimilated, Wales was not incorporated with England. 
It was not until the reign of Henry VIII. that the princi- 
pality was represented in the English Parliament, and 
the sovereignty, which from 1300 onwards was generally 
although not invariably bestowed on the king's eldest 
son, conferred under the most favourable circumstances 
little more than a high-sounding title and some slight 
and ideal claim to the affection of a portion .of the Welsh 
people. The task, however, which the energies of his 
predecessors had failed to accomplish was achieved by 
Edward. All Britain south of the Tweed recognised his 
direct and supreme authority, and the power of the 
Welsh nationality was so far broken that it could never 
more thwart the determined and united action of Eng- 
land. 

During the first ten years of the reign the Welsh war 
and rumours of war wer-e the chief matters that distracted 
Edward as Edward from the scarcely less congenial work of 
a lawgiver. legislation and political Organisation. The age 
was one of great lawgivers. Frederick II. had set the 
example in Naples, and his minister Peter de Vineis had 
codified there the laws and constitutions of the Norman 
king's of Sicily. Lewis IX. had in his ' Etablissements ' 
created a body of law for France ; and Alfonso the Wise 



A.D. 1276-84. Edzvard I. 211 

in the ' Siete Partidas/ or seven divisions of a system of 
universal law, had tried to do the same for Spain. Law 
had become a chief subject of study in the universities, 
and Englishmen, especially clergymen, had been used for 
a century to go to Bologna to read the canon and civil 
law under the great professors there. In England the 
expansion of judicial machinery and judicial business, 
which followed the reforms of Henry II., had worked, 
out of old and new materials, a body of customs which 
became known as the common law ; and one great sum- 
mary of the hitherto unwritten law of England had been 
pubhshed towards the end of the last reign by Henry 
Bracton, one of the judges of the king's court. Men's 
minds had been invited by these and the like influences 
to this study. The nation, awaking to political work, 
began to see the necessity of changing or amending the 
existing system of law. 

In undertaking the work of a lawgiver Edward I. 
was simply approaching one part of his duty as a king ; 
but his own mind had, as has been said, a probable 
legal bent ; his chief minister Robert Burnell pi^n/or the 

° ... codmcation 

was a great lawyer ; in his journey through of the law. 
Italy he had engaged the services of Francesco Accursi, 
an eminent jurist of Bologna, whose father had written a 
body of explanatory glosses on the Roman law. It is 
probable that the king had set before himself the codifica- 
tion of the law as one great object. The work of Britton, 
another eminent judge of his time, which is written in 
French, and contains much that is not in Bracton, was 
published in Edward's name ; and some of his longer Acts 
of Parliament contain provisions so varied and full as 
almost to constitute codes in special departments of law. 
But the English nation seems to have had a dread of too 
elaborate systems, and the whole of the national law has 



212 The Early Plantagenets. ch. x. 

never yet been under supreme authority embodied in a 
single compilation. 

The legislation of Edward I. must be sought in the 
statute books. It may be generally described as an 
PnncI lesof 3-ttempt to dcvclop and apply the principles 
Edward's which had been conceded in Magna Carta, 
egis a ion. ^^^ ^^ adapt them to the changed circum- , 
stances of his time. That document had now become, 
what the laws of Edward the Confessor had been in the 
reign of Henry I., and the laws of Henry I. under John, 
the watchword of the party which was bent on preventing 
any increase or abuse of royal power. 

Edward himself, who took for his motto the words 
'■ Pactum serva,' which may be seen upon his tomb, not 
Edward and unnaturally regarded' the demands which were 
the Great made for the re-issue of the Great Charter as 
a slur upon his good faith. Only once during 
the first half of his reign did he undertake to re-confirm 
it; and when the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1279 ob- 
tained the enactment of a canon by which copies of the 
charter were to be affixed to the doors of the churches, 
the king interfered to forbid it. It is not too much, per- 
haps, to say that it was the legal rather than the consti- 
tutional articles of the Great Charter that he took the most 
pains to develop. The influence of the great lords is 
conspicuous in some of the provisions of his statutes 
which tend to restrict the liberty of alienating lands 
Jealousy of ecclesiastical aggrandisement appears in 
others which forbid the acquisition of new estates by 
the clergy. It cannot be supposed likely that a king like 
Edward would miss his opportunity of strengthening the 
hold which he had on both barons and prelates. The 
idea of constitutional liberty had now grown so powerful 
that he knew that he could no longer make laws, or raise 
taxes, or even go to war without tHeir consent. In those 



cH. X. Edward I. 213 

respects he could not coerce them. But the legal rights 
which the crown had over its own vassals were a dif- 
ferent matter. It was quite practicable for Feudal 
him to exact the full payment of feudal ser- powers of 
vices, to prevent the impoverishment of the 
crown by the transference of estates which paid a large 
revenue to the king on the occasion of successions or 
marriages or wardships, into the hands of religious corpo- 
rations which neither died nor married nor required 
tutelage. It was equally practicable to prevent the owners 
of great estates from cutting up their property, by what was 
called subinfeudation, into smaller holdings, which would 
not, any more than the church lands, render to the king 
the feudal services that he required. Two of Edward's 
most famous statutes — the statute ' De Religiosis,' in 1279, 
and the statute ' Quia Emptores,' in 1290, were intended 
to secure these two points. 

Again, all measures for the due interpretation and ex- 
ecution of the law protected the people at large against 
the usurpations of their strong neighbours. It po^^^ of 
is not to be forgotten that although in England the feudal 
the feudal landlords had, more than a century 
before, been deprived of their power to usurp jurisdiction 
over their vassals, and obliged to admit the king's judges, 
still a great part of Europe was governed under the old 
plan. We have seen how, during the barons' war, the 
party opposed to the king was divided between those who 
really desired the freedom of the people, and those who 
wished to restrict the king's power in order to increase 
their own. In some important matters of judicial proceed- 
ing the interests of the crown and of the people at large 
were still united in opposition to the claims of the great 
landowners. Hence the importance of regulating and 
improving the courts of provincial judicature, the limita- 
tion of the functions of the sheriffs, which fell constantly 



214 ^^^^ Early Plantagenets. ch. x. 

into the hands of local magnates ; the organisation of the 
sessions of the king's judges, and the opening of ways by 
which suits, which could not be fairly or justly settled in 
the country/ might be heard in the king's courts at West- 
minster. It is to the early years of Edward I. that we 
owe the final division of the three great royal tribunals; 

the Court of Exchequer, in which were heard 
Exchequer, 3-11 causes that touched the revenue ; that of 
BenS and King's Bench, which determined suits in which 
Common the king was concerned, criminal questions on 

the matters, which under the name of ' pleas of 
the crown ' were reserved for his particular treatment; and 
that of Common Pleas, which heard suits between pri- 
vate individuals. Now these matters were apportioned 
to three distinct staffs of judges, instead of being heard 
indiscriminately by the whole or part of the judicial body. 
The circuits of judges of assize were defined during the 
same period of the reign. Many other measures for the 
protection of life and property helped to increase the feel- 
ing of security in the body of the people, to further the 
growth of loyalty, and at the same time to increase the 
royal income. 

A third principle of Edward's legislation may be dis- 
covered in the careful reform and expansion of some of 
Statute of the most ancient institutions, which he knew 
Winchester, j^g^^^ -j^ former reigns assisted greatly in the 
defence of the crown and in the maintenance of peace 
and order. In the Statute of Winchester, in 1285, he 
placed the ancient militia system, which Henry II. had 
remodelled by the Assize of Arms, upon a better footing, 
and re-organised the ' watch and ward,' by which the 
particular districts and communities were trained to keep 
order and to search for and arrest criminals. Similar 
methods were followed in the preparations for national 
defence in 1294, and boih by sea and land the old duty of 



CH. X. Edward L 215 

guarding the country was based upon the same primitive 
system. In all these particular points we may trace a 
purpose of developing the policy by which Henry II. had 
tried to overthrow the influence of feudalism, and to 
strengthen his administration by alliance with the great 
body of the free people ; by placing arms in their hands, 
providing them with just and accessible tribunals, and 
by diminishing, as far as could be done, the means which 
the landlord had of oppressing those who held their land 
under him. We shall see by and by how the same prin- 
ciples affected his plans, or the plans which circum- 
stances forced upon him, for the development of the 
Parliament and constitution. But before doing this we 
must look at the question of finance, which, with those 
of war and legislation, gave him, from the very begin- 
ning of the reign, a great deal of hard work. This has 
been already sketched in connexion with the work of 
Henry II. It must now be viewed in fuller detail. 

The sources of royal revenue were various rather than 
abundant. There were, first of all, the estates of the 
crown, crown lands strictly so called, which 
the king as king possessed and managed like the royal 
any other landlord, out of which he provided '^^"^^'^"^• 
for his family and friends, and which, in spite of the 
national jealousy of favourites, were always more liable to 
be diminished than to be increased. Of the same class, 
though with some important differences, were the estates 
which fell into the hands of the sovereign on the extinc- 
tion of great families or the forfeiture of their owners ; 
so the earldom of Chester had come into the hands of 
Henry III, on the death of the last earl, and the estates of 
the Montforts after the battle of Evesham. These estates 
— escheats, as they were called — seldom remained long in 
the king's hands ; the magnates did not like to seethe 
inheritances of their fellows one by one absorbed in the 



2i6 TJie Early Plautagenefs. ch. x. 

royal domain, and it was necessary from time to time 
to provide for new rising men and for younger sons of 
the king. The possession of crown estates is, of course, 
common to all ages and forms of royalty. But a some- 
what intricate system pervades the English finance of 
the middle ages, and grows out of the growing history of 
the nation itself Under the Anglo-Saxon kings there 
had been little call for taxation. The king had a revenue 
from the public lands of the nation, which furnished him 
with provisions and money, enough to supply all needs 
that were not satisfied from his royal estates. It was a 
part of the sheriff's duty to collect these contributions, 
and they were later on fixed at a regular sum to be paid 
by the sheriff, and exacted by him from the county 
he ruled. All local administration was maintained by 
popular action, the landowners being liable for the three 
great tasks called 'trinoda necessitas,' the building of 
bridges and fortresses, and the service in arms for na- 
tional defence ; and thus the king had little expense if 
he had little revenue. In the great emergencies, how- 
ever, of the Danish wars, a tax of two shillings on the 
hide of land, the famous Danegeld, was established and 
became perpetual. 

These three, the royal lands, the contributions of the 
shires, and the Danegeld, were the sources of revenue 
The Ex- which William the Conqueror found when he 

chequer. \i2.^ secured his hold on England. Under 
him, or under the ministers of William Rufus, were 
introduced a number of new expedients for raising 
money, expedients which were made easy by the new 
doctrine of land tenure that had been brought in at the 
Conquest. The Norman kings did not commute the 
old for the new methods, but simply added the feudal 
burdens to the ancient national taxes. The Exchequer 
under Henry I. audited the national, or rather the royal, 



CH. X. Edward L 217 

accounts ; twice a year the sheriffs paid the ' ferm ' — that 
is, the composition or rent for the ancient dues of their 
counties — the Danegeld, and the fines arising from the 
local courts of law ; but at the same times were paid the 
feudal incidents, the reliefs, the sums which the son 
paid to secure the inheritance of his father, the profits 
of marriages, of wardships, and the aids which the 
king as feudal lord of the whole land claimed as a right 
from his vassals. Henry I. had, in the beginning of his 
reign, promised to make these demands definite and 
reasonable, and he had done so; but they were heavy 
notwithstanding. Still nothing beyond these could, even 
on the feudal theory, be taken from the subject without 
the consent of the national council. When the king's 
necessities were too great to be met by the ordinary 
meansj the barons and bishops in council were asked for 
a grant; and the inferior classes received in the county 
courts an intimation of what they were expected to con- 
tribute. It is true that there was little liberty of refusing 
or chance of evading, payment, bat a certain form of 
consent on the part of the taxpayer was thus main- 
tained. 

After the time of Henry I. important changes had 
taken place in the matter of taxation, many of which 
have been noticed in our former pages. Henry 

TV -111 r Changes in 

II., as we saw, mtroduced the payment of the modes 
scutage, by which the landowners contributed "f taxation. 
money instead of serving personally in arms. He like- 
wise got rid of Danegeld, and consulted the towns and 
shires on the amount of grants required, by means of his 
itinerant judges. Until now all taxation had been de- 
frayed by the land, except in the boroughs, where the 
contribution required was often raised by a poll-tax, an 
equal sum per head imposed on every inhabitant. To- 
wards the end of the reign of Henry II. the custom of 



2 1 8 The Early Plantagenets. ch, x. 

taxing moveables, household furniture, and stock was 
introduced ; first, in order to raise the national contribu- 
tion for the Crusade, known as the Saladin tithe. Great 
part of the money required for Richard's ransom was 
levied in the same way, and under John and Henry III. 
this became the most common way of taxing. A seventh, 
a tenth, a fifteenth, or a thirtieth of ' moveables ' was from 
time to time asked for, and the more frequent the need 
became the more fully was developed the idea that the 
taxpayer had a right to be consulted on the amount 
which he was to pay, and to gain, if he could, some ad- 
vantage in return. John's frequent demands for money, 
and the illegal ways in which he took it, led to the exac- 
tion of the famous promise embodied in the 12th article 
of the Great Charter : ' No scutage or aid shall be im- 
posed in our kingdom unless by the common counsel 
of our kingdom, except to ransom our own person, to 
make our firstborn son a knight, and to marry once 
our firstborn daughter.' The 14th article describes the 
assembly which is to be called when any such impost 
is required : ' We will cause our archbishops, bishops, 
abbots, earls, and greater barons to be summoned seve- 
rally by our letters, and besides we will cause all who 
hold of us in chief to be summoned by general summons 
by our sheriffs and bailiffs.' ~^ 

The growth of the country in wealth during the first 
half of the reign of Henry III. made this plan of raising 
™, revenue the most convenient and the easiest. 

i he revenue 

under As there were few foreign expeditions there 

^"'^^ ' was little opportunity of asking for scutage, 
and nearly all the regular taxation was raised from move- 
ables, or, as we should now say, personal property. On 
each occasion on which such a grant was demanded, the 
barons and bishops tried to obtain some compensation in 
the shape of a re-issue of the charters or an amendment 



CH. X. Edward I. 219 

of the law. The many confirmations of the charters 
during that long reign were, it may be said, purchased 
from the crown in this way. But Henry could not obtain 
grants sufficient to meet the requirements of his greedy 
and extravagant court. He exacted, contrary to the 
letter and spirit of the charter, large sum^ from the 
citizens of London, under the name of gifts ; from the 
Jews, whom he looked upon ver)^ much as if they were 
part of the farming stock of his realm ; and from every 
class of persons whom he could draw within the meshes 
of his legal nets, he exacted money by fine or composition 
for real or imaginary offences. 

But besides the land and the personal property of its 
inhabitants there was another source of mcome which 
ultimately was to become most lucrative — ^, 
the taxation of merchandise, imported and toms 
exported, and especially the wool, wool-fells, imports" and 
and leather, which were, if not exactly the ^^po^ts. 
chief produce of the land, at least the most profitable, 
the least easy to conceal, and the most easy for the 
king's ministers to confiscate. These two branches of 
indirect taxation, although distinct in themselves, were 
managed by the same machinery — that of the customs; 
and they have to be treated together. But the taxes on 
imported merchandise had their origin in the licences to 
trade or to introduce particular sorts of goods, which it 
was one of the ancient rights of the king to grant, whilst 
the taxes on exported produce were primarily a part of 
the general system of taxing moveables. Both had been 
long in requisition ; the privileges of the foreign mer- 
chants had been a source of profit even before the 
Conquest; the wool of the Cistercian monks and other 
great sheep-farmers had been demanded for Richard's 
ransom, and both classes had suffered under John and 
Henry III. Magna Carta had contained, in its 41st 



220 The Early Plantagenets. ch. x. 

article, a distinct provision in favour of free trade, which 
would have obviated the evils of mismanagement in this 
department, if it could have been carried out. All mer- 
chants were to have safe ingress and egress to and from 
England, and to pay only the right and ancient customs. 
But such a provision did not forbid separate negotiations 
between the king and the traders, by which both made a 
profit to be wrung from the consumers. One part of 
Edward's financial policy was to bring the customs into 
order and make them permanently and regularly profit- 
able, and this he undertook in his first parliament. 

He had come home, deep in debt, to an inheritance 
heavily encumbered by his father's debts. He had ob- 
p liamen taincd from the Pope, whom he visited at 
tary settle- Orvieto on his way, permission to exact a 
revenue on tenth of the iucome of the clergy for three 
Edward I. years. But this v/ould not be sufficient. He 
took counsel, therefore, with the Italian bankers, who 
had already obtained a footing in England, and devised 
the plan of obtaining from his assembled estates a per- 
manent revenue from wool ; half a mark — that is, six 
shillings and eightpence — on each sack of wool exported. 
This is the legal foundation of the English customs. It 
was formally granted in the parliament which met soon 
after Easter 1275, and with a grant of a fifteenth of 
moveables, and the tax already imposed on the clergy, 
provided him with a revenue which carried on the 
government for some years. Nor did it require material 
increase until Edward, in 1292 and 1293, became involved 
in a new series of wars. 

The exigencies of the Welsh war, the necessity for 
legal changes, and the orderly arrangement of the royal 
revenue, could not have failed to make their mark on the 
growth of parliament, even if Edward had not learned the 
lessons of constitutional lore which his father's reign had 



CH. X. 



Edward I. 221 



furnished; and, even without those lessons, Edward was 
eminently qualified by the very habit of his mind to be a 
constitutional reformer. Accordingly, in the parliaments 
of his reign, especially in those which were called at ir- 
regular intervals from 1275 to 1295, are found the clearest, 
most distinct, steps of growth, which led to the complete 
organisation of the three estates of the realm in one 
central assembly. And here, again, we must take a brief 
retrospect. 

The days were long past in which either the king, the 
barons, or the nation at large were content to see the 
kingdom managed by a council of barons and ^ 

, ° o ^ ^ bummoning 

bishops, gathered round a sovereign who was of represen- 
of necessity either strong enough to coerce sembiies'for 
them or too weak to resist them. From the purposes of 

taxation. 

very beginning of the century the right of 
the taxpayer to give or refuse had been becoming more 
clearly recognised ; and the methods which under Henry 
I. and Henry 11. had been used for facihtating the col- 
lection of money provided a machinery which could be 
used for still more important purposes. In the twelfth 
century, when the king wanted money, and had declared 
in his council what he expected, he sent down his justices 
or barons of the Exchequer to arrange with the towns 
and counties the sums which were to be contributed. 
Whilst land only was taxed all questions of liability 
could be answered by reference to Domesday Book; but 
when personal property was taxed it was necessary to 
discover how much each man possessed before he could 
be made to pay. This could be ascertained only by 
consulting his neighbours ; and, in order to do this, a 
system of assessment was devised by which the property 
of each taxpayer was valued by a jury of his neighbours. 
The custom of electing these assessors, and, further, of 
electing collectors for the counties, treasurers, and similar 



222 The Early Plantagenets. ch. x. 

officers, familiarised the people with the idea of using 
representation for such business. For legal transactions 
they already used representation in the county courts. 
The grand jury which presented the list of accused per- 
sons to the king's judges on circuit was, for instance, 
an elected and representative body, chosen in the county 
court. The convenience of dealing thus with the govern- 
ment by representative accredited agents approved itself 
to both king and nation long before there was any idea of 
calling the representatives to parliament. On one occa- 
sion, in the reign of John, each shire had been ordered to 
send four discreet knights to speak with the king at 
Oxford; and that Council of St. Albans, in which men- 
tion was first made of the charter of Henry I., contained 
representatives from every township in the royal de- 
mesne. In 1254, when Henry III. was in France, the 
queen regent summoned representative knights to tha 
parliament to make a grant. In the parliaments which 
were held in 1259 and afterwards, representative knights 
brought up the lists of grievances under which their 
constituents were groaning; and in 1264 Simon de 
Montfort had called up from both shires and boroughs 
representatives to aid him in the new work of govern- 
ment. That part of Earl Simon's work had not been 
lasting. The task was left for Edward I., to be advanced 
by gradual, safe steps, but to be thoroughly completed, 
as a part of a definite and orderly arrangement, according 
to which the English Parliament was to be the perfect 
representation of the Three Estates of the Realm, as- 
sembled for purposes of taxation, legislation, and united 
political action. Under this system the several commu- 
nities were no longer to be asked to give their money or 
to accept the laws, by commissions of judges whom they 
could neither resist nor refuse, but were to send their 
deputies with full powers to act for them, to join with the 



CH. X. Edzvard I. 223 

lords and the judges and the king himself in deliberation 
on all the matters on which counsel and consent were 
needed. The steps of the change may be traced very 
briefly. 

Edward's first parham^ent, in 1275, enabled him to 
pass a great statute of legal reform, called the Statute of 
Westminster the First, and to exact the new 
custom on wool; another assem.bly, the same mentsof 
year, granted him a fifteenth. Both these are Edward I. 
said to represent the '■ communaulte/ or community of 
the land ; but there is no evidence that the commons of 
either town or county were represented. They w^ere, in 
fact, consulted as to taxation by special commissions, as 
had been done before. In 1282, when the expenses of the 
Welsh war were becoming heavy, Edward again tried the 
plan of obtaining money from the towns and counties by 
separate negotiation ; but as that did not provide him 
with funds sufficient for his purpose, he called together, 
early in 1283, two great assemblies, one at York and 
another at Northampton, in which four knights from each 
shire and four members from each city and borough were 
ordered to attend ; the cathedral and conventual clergy 
also of the two provinces being represented at the same 
places by their elected proctors. At these assembhes 
there was no attendance of the barons ; they were with 
the king in Wales ; but the commons made a grant of 
one thirtieth on the understanding that the lords should 
do the same. Another assembly was held at Shrewsbury 
the same year, 1283, to witness the trial of David of 
Wales ; to this the bishops and clergy were not called, 
but twenty towns and all the counties were ordered to 
send representatives. Another step was taken in 1290: 
knights of the shire were again summoned ; but still 
much remained to be done before a perfect parliament 
was constituted. Counsel was wanted for legislation, 



224 '^^^^ Early Plantagenets. ch, x. 

consent was wanted for taxation. The lords were sum- 
moned in May, and did their work in June and July, 
granting a feudal aid and passing the statute '■ Quia 
Emptores,' but the knights only came to vote or to 
promise a tax, after the law had been passed ; and the 
towns were again taxed by special commissions. In 
1294 — for we must anticipate the thread of the general 
history — under the alarm of war with France, an alarm 
which led Edward into several breaches of constitutional 
law, he went still further, assembling the clergy by their 
representatives in August, and the shires by their repre- 
sentative knights in October. The next year, 1295, 
witnessed the first summons of a perfect and model par- 
liament ; the clergy represented by their bishops, deans, 
archdeacons, and elected proctors ; the barons summoned 
severally in person by the king's special writ, and the 
commons summoned by writs addressed to the sheriffs, 
directing them to send up two elected knights from each 
shire, two elected citizens from each city, and two elected 
burghers from each borough. The writ by which the 
prelates were called to this parliament contained a famous 
sentence taken from the Roman law, ' That which touches 
all should be approved by all,' a maxim which might 
serve as a motto for Edward's constitutional scheme, 
however slowly it grew upon him, now permanently and 
consistently completed. 

The House of Commons was not the only part of the 
parliamentary system that benefited by his genius for 

organisation. The House of Lords became, 
Lords^ under the same influence and about the same 

time, a more definitely constructed body than 
it had been before. Up to this reign the numbers of 
barons specially summoned had greatly varied. When 
they were assembled for military service they had been 
summoned by special writ, whilst the forces of the shires 



CH. X. Edward L 225 

were summoned by a general order to the sheriff. Al- 
though a much smaller number were requisite for pur- 
poses of counsel than for armed service, the two functions 
of the king's immediate vassals were intimately connected, 
and for a long period every baron or landowner who was 
summoned by name to the host might perhaps claim to be 
summoned by name to the parliament. But such a sum- 
mons was a burden rather than a privilege. The poorer 
lords, the smaller landowners, would be glad to escape 
it, and to throw in their lot with the commons, who were 
represented by elected knights ; nor were the kings very 
anxious to entertain so large and disorderly a company 
of counsellors. The custom of calling to parliament a 
much smaller number of these tenants-in-chief than were 
called to the host must have grown up during the reign 
of Henry III., as the idea of representation grew. From 
the reign of Edward I. it became the rule to call only a 
definite number of hereditary peers ; and, although that 
rule was not based upon any legal enactment or any 
recorded resolution of government, it quickly gained 
acceptance as the constitutional rule: the king could in- 
crease the number of lords by new writs of summons, 
and the special writ conferred hereditary peerage. This 
limited body was the House of Lords, and the dignity of 
the peerage descended from father to son, no longer tied 
to the possession of a particular estate or quantity of 
land held of the king. 

With the representatives of the commons and the 
estate of the lords Edward associated a representative 
assembly of clergy ; delegates were to be sent Rgpresen- 
from each diocese to each parliament to assist tation of the 
in the national work and to tax the ecclesi- ^^ "=• ' 
astical property. And the form invented by Edward in 
1294 still subsists, although for many centuries no such 
representatives have been chosen or sat in parliament, 

M. H. Q 



226 The Early Plantagenets. ch. x. 

In truth the clergy were averse to obeying the mandate 
for, their appearance in a secular parliament, and pre- 
ferred to vote the money, which it would have been very 
difficult for them to refuse, in the two provincial convoca- 
tions of York and Canterbury, which likewise contained 
their chosen representatives, assembled as a spiritual 
council. These were called together by the writs of the 
two archbishops ; they could, through the bishops, act in 
concert with the parliament, and were not unfrequently, 
in modern times invariably, called together within a few > 
days of the meeting of parliament. 

The latter half of Edward's reign witnessed most of 
the critical occasions which opened the way for these 
National changes or improvements in the constitutional 
policy of system, and supplied means for testing^ their 

Edward I. rr • ^1 r 1 1 • r 

emciency. These must form the subject of 
another chapter. But we may pause, before we proceed, 
to mark definitely one other note of Edward's policy. 
Henry II. had done his best to get rid of the feudal ele- 
ment in judicial matters, and to create a national army 
independent of the influences of land tenure. He had 
sent his judges throughout the land and taken the judi- 
cature out of the hands of the feudal lords. He armed 
all freemen under the assize of arms, and, by instituting 
scutage, raised money to provide mercenaries. By the 
national militia at home and by mercenary forces abroad 
he strengthened himself so as not to depend for an army 
on that feudal rule by which every landlord led his vas- 
sals to battle. Edward I., whilst he still more perfectly 
carried out these principles, went further in the same 
direction, in his constitution of parliament. The repre- 
sentatives whom he called up from the shires and towns 
were chosen by the freemen of the shires and towns in 
their ancient courts ; they were not the delegates of 
royal tenants-in-chief, but of the whole free people. Even 



A.D. 1284-9. Edward I. 227 

the barons who composed the House of Lords owed their 
places there not so much to the fact that they held great 
estates as the immediate vassals of the crown, as to the 
summons by which they were selected from a great num- 
ber of persons so qualified. Even if this had not been 
the case, the institution of the House of Commons would 
itself have marked the extinction of the ancient feudal 
idea that the council of the king was merely the assembly 
of those who held their land under him. But it was so 
throughout Edward's policy. In court, and camp, and 
council, it was the general bond of allegiance and fealty, 
not the peculiar tie of feudal relation, by which he chose 
to bind his people, in their three estates, to help him to 
govern and to take their share in all national work. 



CHAPTER XL . 

THE CONFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS. 

Punishment of the judges — Banishment of the Jews — Scottish suc- 
cession — The French quarrel — The ecclesiastical quarrel — The 
constitutional crisis — The confirmation of the charters — Parlia- 
ment of Lincoln — Its sequel — War of Scottish independence — 
Edward's death. 

Edward completed his work in Wales at the end of the 
year 1284. The next year was spent in legislation, and 
in the summer of 1286 he went to France. Evils conse- 
Edmund of Cornwall acted as regent in his q^entonthe 

° absence of 

absence, and he stayed away for three years, the king. 
For two out of the three the country was at peace ; in 
1288, however, the absence of the king began to tell, and 
in 1289 the need of money for home and foreign purposes 
became pressing. The news that the Earls of Gloucester 
and Hereford were engaged in all but open warfare on the 
Welsh marches, and that the collected parliament of 1289 



228 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1284-90. 

had refused to sanction a new tax before the kmg came 
home, brought Edward back in the August of that year. 
He found that the pubhc service had suffered sadly from 
the removal of the guiding hand. Complaints were pour- 
ing in against the judges of the Courts of Westminster ; 
violence and corruption were charged upon the chief 
administrators of the law; and the king's first work was 
to try the accused, to remove and punish the guilty. The 
two chief justices and several other high officers were, 
after careful investigation, deprived of their places. The 
next thing was if possible to gain a stronger hold over 
the uneasy earls. Gilbert of Gloucester, whose assistance 
had enabled Edward to overthrow Earl Simon at Eves- 
ham, and who had been the first to take the oath of 
fealty at his accession, had been throughout his career 
marked by singular erratic waywardness. He was not 
yet an old man, and a project had been on foot for some 
time, by which he was to marry the king's daughter 
Johanna, who was born at Acre during the Crusade. This 
was now carried into effect, and thus one of the most 
dangerous competitors for influence in the country was 
bound more closely than ever to the king. 

That done Edward looked round for means of raising 
money. And this was found in a device which has ever 
Banishment since weighed heavily on his reputation. The 
of the Jews. Jews were banished from England, and in 
gratitude for the relief the nation undertook to make a 
grant of money. The measure was no doubt generally 
acceptable ; it was backed by the clergy, by the strong 
influence of Eleanor of Provence, the king's mother, and 
by his own bitter prejudice. Harsh, however, as this 
measure was, it was not a mere act of religious persecu- 
tion. The Jews had, unfortunately for the nation and 
for themselves, devoted themselves to usurious banking 
when usury was forbidden to Christians. They had 



A.D. I290. Edward I. 229 

thus come to wear the appearance of oppressive money- 
lenders. They Hved, too, under a system of law devised 
by the kings to keep them ever at the royal mercy ; their 
accumulated stores of gold lay conveniently under the 
king's hand, and Henry III., whenever he wanted money, 
had been able to obtain it by extortion from the Jews. 
But, last and worst, they had allowed themselves to be 
used by the rich as agents in the oppression of the poor ; 
they had made over the mortgages on small estates to 
the neighbouring great landowners, and in other ways 
had played into the hands of the nobles, whose protection 
was necessary to their own safety. They were hated 
by the poor. Great men, like Grosseteste and Simon de 
Montfort, had longed to see them banished; the accusa- 
tion of money-clipping and forgery was rife against them, 
and two hundred and eighty had been hanged for these 
offences since the beginning of the reign. Edward was 
too bigoted or perhaps too high-minded to wish to retain 
them as useful servants when the nation demanded their 
expulsion. They were banished, and the price paid for 
the concession was a tax of a fifteenth granted by clergy 
and laity in the autumn of 1290. 

Just at this time the death of the young Queen of 
Scots opened to Edward the prospect of asserting his 
supremacy over the whole island, a prospect Claims of 
which within a few years tempted him to u'^t^^scot- 
claim the actual sovereignty of Scotland. The land. 
design of a marriage between the young queen and 
Edward's eldest surviving son, Edward of Carnarvon, 
which had been already concluded, shows that the king 
contemplated the union of the two kingdoms in the next 
generation ; her death disappointed that hope, but there 
is no reason to suppose that Edward, when he undertook 
to settle the Scottish succession, had in his eye any pro- 
ject of conquest. 



230 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1290. 

The case of Scotland was very different from that of 
Wales. The Scottish people were a rising not a declining 
The Scottish nation. The Scottish kingdom was a col- 
kingfdom. lection of States held by different historical 
titles, and inhabited by races of different origin, not a 
nationality struggling for existence. Southern Scotland 
was far more akin to Northern England than to Northern 
Scotland ; inhabited by people of English blood and 
English institutions, and feudally held, like great part 
of England, by Norman barons. The royal race was a 
Celtic race, but Celtic Scotland gave to the kings little 
more than a nominal recognition ; the strength of the 
royal house was in the Lowlands. Ever since the Nor- 
man Conquest the relations between Scotland and England 
had been close. Of the several provinces over which 
the Scottish king now ruled, Lothian was a part of the 
ancient Northumbria, which had been granted, according 
to English accounts, by either Edgar the Peaceable or by 
Canute to a Scottish king. South-western Scotland, or 
Scottish Cumberland, had been given by Edmund L 
to Malcolm. The whole Scottish race had acknow- 
ledged as their father and lord Edward, the West 
Saxon king, the son of Alfred ; and William the Con- 
queror, and William Rufus after him, had extorted a 
recognition of the superiority or overlordship of the 
King of the English. These were shadowy claims, 
certainly ; but since the middle of the twelfth century 
there had been several instances in which either the 
King, of Scots or his son had received English estates 
and dignities and done homage for them. The earldom.s 
of Northumberland and Huntingdon had been thus held by 
Henry, son of David I., and the latter by his son William 
the Lion. Homage had on several occasions been ren- 
dered without any very distinct understanding whether it 
was for the English earldoms, for the Lowland provinces, 



A.D. 1290-3. Edward L 231 

or for the whole Scottish kingdom, that the overlordship 
of the Enghsh crown was acknowledged. Henry II. had, 
indeed, after the capture of king William, compelled 
both him and his barons to recognise his superiority in 
the strictest terms, but Richard had liberated them from 
that special bondage, and the mutual reservations or 
compromises, which both preceded and followed that 
short period of subjection, left the claims as vague as 
ever. Except during the same period the relations of the 
two kingdoms had been, since the death of Stephen, 
fairly friendly. The Scottish kings were married to kins- 
women of the English kings ; their political progress 
followed at some short distance behind, but in the foot- 
steps of the progress begun under Henry II., and for 
nearly a century there had been only short and languid 
intervals of war. Now and then the Scots had pillaged 
or intrigued, but the two crowns were generally at peace. 
Edward's design for the Scottish marriage would have 
turned the peace into union ; but the time was not come 
for that. 

These facts will explain the position taken by Edward 
in 1290. He believed that upon him, as overlord, de- 
volved the right of determining which of the Decision of 
many heirs was entitled to the succession. Edward m 

■' lavour of 

With great pomp and circumstance he under- Baliiol. 
took the task ; obtained from the competitors a recog- 
nition of his character as arbitrator, and, after careful 
examination, decided the cause in favour of John Baliiol, 
a powerful North Country baron of his own, in whom 
according to recognised legal right the inheritance 
vested. He was careful to obtain, on Balliol's accession, 
a; distinct homage for himself and his heirs for the whole 
kingdom of Scotland. This was the work of 1291 and 
1292 ; early in 1293 symptoms began to show themselves 
that the result would not be lasting. The rising troubles 



232 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1293. 

in the North were followed by an alarm on the side of 
France. The opportunity given by these troubles^ and the 
means taken by Edward to meet them, combined to pro- 
duce the complication of difficulties which brought about 
the great constitutional crisis of the reign in 1297, The 
several points must be taken in order: the relations with 
France first. 

In France Edward still possessed Gascony and some 
small adjoining provinces, which, after all the vicissitudes 
Relations of °^ ^^^ preceding century, had, mainly by the 
Edward honesty and friendly feeling of Lewis IX. and 

French Philip III., been preserved to the descendants 

king. Q-j- Henry II. In 1279 Eleanor of Castille, 

his wife, had claimed as her inheritance the little pro- 
vince of Ponthieu, lying on the coast between Flanders 
and Normandy, and her claim had been recognised by 
Philip III. But Philip died in 1285, and his son, Philip 
IV., generally known as Philip the Fair, was a true 
inheritor of the guile and ability of Philip Augustus. 
Edward's long visit to France, from 1286 to 1289, had 
been spent partly in arranging for a continuance of 
friendship with the king, and partly in securing and 
reforming the administration of Gascony; but he must 
have been aware that the jealousy with which Philip 
viewed him would sooner or later take the form of 
downright hostility. Until 1293, however, they con- 
tinued to be friends. In that year a series of petty 
quarrels, between the Norman coast towns and the 
English sailors, and an outbreak between the Gascons 
and their neighbours, gave Philip his opportunity. He 
summoned Edward to Paris to render an account for 
the misdeeds of the offenders, and on his non-appearance 
condemned him to forfeiture. This was done with con- 
siderable craft. Edward, who had lost his faithful wife 
in 1290, was engaged in a negotiation for marriage with 



A. D. 1294-5- Edward I. 233 

Margaret, the sister of Philip; in preparation for that 
marriage a new enfeoffment or settlement of Gascony 
on the King of England and his heirs was agreed on. 
As a step towards that settlement the fortresses of 
Guienne were for form's sake placed in Philip's hands, 
and as soon as he had hold of them he declared Edward 
a contumacious vassal, for not having obeyed his sum- 
mons to Paris, This was done in May 1294. 

The news of this outrageous proceeding was received 
in England with great indignation, and for a moment it 
appeared that the nation was unanimously consequen- 
determined to uphold the rights of the king, ces of the 

_,,,.,, -r^. - „ , quarrel with 

Even John Balliol, the Kmg of Scots, who phUip the 
had himself got into trouble owing to his ■^^^'^• 
divided duties to his subjects and his overlord, and who 
was present in the Parliament which Edward called in 
June, offered to devote the whole produce of his English 
estates to maintain the righteous cause. A great scheme 
was set on foot for foreign alliances : the Spaniards were 
asked for substantial assistance ; the princes of the Low 
Countries, the King of the Romans too, were taken into 
pay. A thorough scheme for the defence of the coast 
and organisation of the navy was devised. Edward's 
urgent needs or consistent policy led him to assemble, as 
we saw, the estates of the kingdom, in a way in which 
they had never been brought together before, and the 
parliaments of 1294 and 1295 completed the formation 
of the constitutional system. But a rising on the Welsh 
border prevented any general expedition in 1294; and 
the dread of a common enemy threw the Scots in 1295 
into correspondence with France. Edward, provoked at 
the delay, pressed by the deficiency and waste of his re- 
sources, had recourse to very exceptional measures for 
raising money, and so produced a reaction against the 
foreign war, and a combination of political forces most 



234 T^^^^ Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1296-7. 

dangerous to his own authority, and most trying to the 
new machinery of government at the very moment of its 
completion. The model parliament of 1295 was followed 
by the crisis of 1296, and the confirmation of charters of 
1297. 

So strong a king, so determinate a policy, was sure to 
provoke complaints ; the very enforcement of order wears 

the appearance of oppression. Both clergy 
Edward ^° and laity had their grievances, and Edward's 
with the extremity gave them their opportunity. The 

clergy, with a certain number of bishops at 
their head, had throughout the struggles of the century 
ranged themselves on the side of liberty. The inferior 
clergy had always had much in common with the people, 
and John's conduct during the Interdict had broken the 
alliance which ever since the Norman Conquest had sub- 
sisted between the great prelates and the court. Stephen 
Langton had set an example which was bravely followed. 
Henry III., by his love of foreigners, his obsequious be- 
haviour to the popes, and his unscrupulous dealings in 
money matters, alienated the national Church almost as 
widely as John had done; while Simon de Montfort had 
conciliated all that was good and holy. But when Henry 
III., with the abuses which he had maintained, had passed 
away, and when Church and nation alike saw that Edward 
was labouring for the benefit of his people with all his 
heart, matters might have been changed. There was 
doubtless need for watchfulness on the part of the clergy, 
for the ministers of the court were always on the look- 
out for means to limit the spiritual power; but defensive 
watchfulness is a different thing from aggression. Three 
successive archbishops had ruled since Edward's acces- 
sion, all of them anxious to promote the independence of 
the Church and to diminish the power of the crown, even 
if it were to be done by throwing the Church more entirely 



A.U. 1297. 



Edward I. 235 



into the hands of the Pope. Hence it was that Archbishop 
Peckham in 1279 had declared himself the champion of 
the Great Charter, although the Great Charter was not 
assailed, and had in a council at Reading passed several 
canons which were intended to limit the king's action in 
ecclesiastical causes. Edward in return had taken his 
opportunity of repressing what seemed to him to be eccle- 
siastical innovation ; he had interfered to prevent the 
publication of the canons, and had made the archbishop 
apologise and withdraw them. Not content with this, 
he took advantage of the occasion to pass the statute 
'• De Religiosis,^ by which he prevented the clergy from 
acquiring more land than they held at the time, with- 
out express permission. The taxation of the clergy too 
was heavy ; the popes were as willing to minister to 
Edward's needs as they had been to supply his father 
with money from the revenues of the English Church. 
More than once they had empowered him to collect a 
three years tenth of all the revenue of the clergy for the 
purpose of a crusade which was never carried out, and in 
1288 Pope Nicolas IV. ordered a new and very exact 
valuation of all church property. This valuation included 
both temporal property, that is land, and spiritual, that 
is tithes and offerings. Such a permanent record laid 
them open at any moment to exaction. But Edward 
was not satisfied to have to ask the Pope's leave to tax 
his own subjects, whether clerical or lay ; he had begun 
to assemble the clergy in councils of their own, for the 
purpose of obtaining money grants, and, a little later, 
gave them a representative constitution as an estate of 
parliament. They were, on the other hand, unwilling to 
obey the summons to attend a secular court, and to 
spend their money on secular purposes, much more so 
when it was demanded out of all proportion and without 
reasonable consultation. Robert Winchelsey, who be- 



236 The Early Plantagenets. a.d, 1297, 

came archbishop in 1294, was fitted to be the leader of 
a strong ecclesiastical opposition. He was a pious, 
learned, and farseeing man, but he was fully possessed 
with the idea that the king was determined to subject 
the Church to the State ; and he knew that in the Pope, 
Boniface VII I., he had a friend and supporter who would 
not desert him. He was ready to fight the battle the 
prospect of which was very near. 

Edward regarded the situation of affairs in 1294 as 

entitling him to assume the office of dictator ; to take all 

advantage the law offered him for raising men 

between ^'^^ moncy ; but, if he saw means which the 

Edward and \^-^ ^^^ j^gt warrant, to usc them also as ius- 

the clergy. . -^ 

tified by the necessity of the case. So he not 
only assembled the barons, clergy, and commons, to 
obtain money grants from them, but seized the wool 
of the merchants and took account of the treasures 
of the churches. It is true that by negotiating with 
the merchants in assemblies of their own he obtained 
their consent to pay a large increase of custom on the 
wool, and that he did not actually confiscate the church 
treasure, still the measures were oppressive and alarm- 
ing; and when in the autumn council of 1294 he de- 
manded one-half of the revenue of the Church the 
alarm became a panic. The clergy yielded, only to find 
another heavy demand made on them the next year ; but 
the king was becoming irritated by delay and the clergy 
emboldened by papal support. Boniface VI 1 1., in February 
1296, issued a famous Bull called, from its opening words, 
the Bull Ciericis Laicos, in which he forbade the king to 
take or the clergy to pay taxes on their ecclesiastical 
revenue. Armed with this Archbishop Winchelsey in 
1297 declined to agree to a money grant, and the king 
replied by placing all the clergy, who would not submit, 
out of the protection of the law. 



A.D. 1297. Edward I. 237 

But by this time the spirit of the laity was roused. 
Gilbert of Gloucester was dead, and the heads of the 
baronage were Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, discontent 
the Marshal, and Humfrey Bohun Earl of of the 
Hereford, the Constable of England ; men barons 
not of high character or of much patriotism, "rowth^f 
but of great power and spirit, and eager to the royal 
take the opportunity of asserting their posi- p^'^®'"' 
tion, which the king's measures for enforcing equal jus- 
tice had threatened to shake. Bohun, too, had been 
imprisoned on account of the private war which he had 
carried on against Gloucester in 1288. Edward's legal 
reforms had touched the baronage like every other class. 
A close inquiry into the title by which they held their 
estates and local jurisdictions — the commission, as it was 
called, of ^ quo warranto ' — had alarmed them in 1278; 
then the Earl Warenne had boldly averred that his 
warrant was the sword by which his lands had been won, 
and by which he was prepared to defend them. They 
found too that, although the new legislation in some re- 
spects gave them a stronger hold on their vassals, that 
advantage was counterbalanced by the stronger hold 
which the king gained by it over themselves. They did 
not care to have too strong a king, or one who ruled them 
by ministers of his own choosing. When, then, early in 
1297, Edward called for the whole military force of the 
kingdom to go abroad, part to follow him to Flanders 
to support his allies, and part to go to Gascony, they 
determined to thwart him. It was a moot question how 
far they were bound to foreign service at all ; the king 
himself seemed to be asking them for a favour rather 
than a right. They knew that the clergy were hostile on 
account of the taxes, and the merchants on account of 
the wool ; they would make the king feel their strength. 
Edward himself acted unwisely; he had become exas- 



238 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1297. 

perated with the delay ; he had lost his early and best 
counsellor, Robert Burnell, and had taken in his place 
Walter Langton, the treasurer, a faithful but unpopular 
and unscrupulous man, and he had conceived the notion, 
which was probably a true one, that the barons wished to 
embarrass him. The plea of necessity by which he tried 
to justify himself must also justify him with posterity. 

The year 1297 saw the contest decided. In February 
the king had summoned the barons to meet at Salisbury. 
When they were assembled the two earls re- 
the barons° fused to perform their offices as marshal and 
at Sails- constable ; the clergy were in a state of out- 

lawry, and the king did not venture to sum- 
mon the representatives of the commons. The assembly 
broke up in wrath. Edward again laid hands on the 
wool, summoned the armed force, and put in execution 
the sentence against the clergy ; the barons assembled in 
arms, the bishops threatened excommunication. In spite 
of this, the king, in July, collected the military strength 
of the nation at London and tried to bring matters to a 
decision. As the earls would not yield he determined to 
submit to the demands of the clergy, and to use his in- 
fluence with the commons so as to get, even informally, 
a vote of more money. Winchelsey saw his opportunity. 
If the king would confirm the charters, the Great Charter 
and the charter of the forests, he would do his best to 
obtain money from the clergy; the Pope had already 
declared that his prohibition did not affect voluntary 
„ -jj grants for national defence. The chief men 
tion of of the commons, who although not summoned 

Edward and ,. , ^ . ■ 

Archbishop as to parliament were present m arms, agreed 
Winchelsey. ^q moX.^ a tax of a fifth ; and the people were 
moved to tears by seeing the pubHc reconcihation of the 
archbishop with the king, who comimended his son 
Edward to his care whilst he himself went to war. 



A.D. 1297. Edward I. 239 

But the end was not come even now. The arch- 
bishop and the earls knew how often the charters had 
been confirmed in vain in King Henry's days; Confirma- 
and it was an evil omen that the king, whilst chaneV^^ 
offerino- to confirm them, was attempting to establishing 

*=" . , ' r T^ 1 • the right of 

exact money without a vote of Parliament, the people 
They drew up a series of new articles to be ^ine tex- 
added to the Great Charter, and, after some ation. 
difficulty, forced them upon the king just as he was pre- 
paring to embark, Edward saw that he must yield, but 
he left his son and his ministers to finish the negotiation. 
As soon as he had sailed the earls went to the Exchequer 
and forbade the officers of that court to collect the newly 
imposed tax; the young Prince Edward was urged to 
summon the knights of the shire to receive the copies 
of the charter which his father had promised, and on 
October 10 the charters were reissued, with an addition 
of seven articles, by which the king renounced the right 
of taxing the nation without national consent. It is true 
that these articles were not drawn up with such exact- 
ness as to prevent all evasion, and Edward I. and Ed- 
ward III. are accused of using the obscurities of the 
wording to justify them in transgressing the spirit of 
the concession. But the confirmation of the charters, 
however won, was the completion of the work begun by 
Stephen Langton and the barons at Runnymede. It 
established finally the principle that for all taxation, 
direct and indirect, the consent of the nation must be 
asked, and made it clear that all transgressions of that 
principle, whether within the letter of the law or beyond 
it, were evasions of the spirit of the constitution. The 
seven articles were these : by the first the charters were 
confirmed; by the second all proceedings in contraven- 
tion of them were declared null ; by the third copies of 
them were to be sent to the cathedral churches to be 



240 The Eaidy Plantagenets. a.d. 1297. 

read twice a year ; and by the fourth the bishops were to 
excommunicate all who transgressed them. These four 
were the contribution of the prelates, the condition under 
which the clergy had been reconciled. By the fifth article 
the king declared that the exactions, by which the people 
had been agrieved, should not be regarded as giving 
him a customary right to take such exactions any more ; 
by the sixth he promised that he would no more take 
such 'aids, tasks, and prises but by common assent of 
the realm ' ; and by the seventh he undertook not to im- 
pose on the wool of the country any such ' maletote ' or 
heavy custom in future without their common assent 
and goodwill. It would have been clearer if the rights 
renounced had been absolutely renounced and clearly 
specified. The king and his servants soon learned that, 
without taking such taxes and maletotes as had been 
complained of, they could by negotiating with the mer- 
chants raise money indirectly without consulting parlia- 
ment, but that excuse was never allowed by the parlia- 
ment to be sufficient, and, when they could, they closed 
every opening for evasion. Thus was E ngland's greatest 
y^ compelled to make to his people the greatest of 
all constitutional concessions, at the very moment at 
which by his new organisation of Parliament he had 
placed the nation for the first time in a position in which 
they could compel him to fulfil it. It was to some extent 
a compromise, in which both parties felt themselves jus- 
tified in putting their own interpretation on the terms by 
which they had been reconciled, but it is not the less 
a landmark in the history of England, second only to 
Magna Carta. The confirmatio cartarum is the fulfilment, 
made now to the whole consolidated people, of the pro- 
mises made in the charter to a nation jiist awaking to its 
unity and to the sense of its own just claims. 

Before we turn again to the military work of the 



A.D. 1297-9- Edward I. 241 

reign, the war for the subjection of Scotland, which 
was one of the main causes of Edward's difficulties at 
this time, and which furnished him with hard Dissatisfac- 
work for the rest of his life, we may briefly tion of 
sum up the sequel of the great constitutional with his 
crisis. Not the least of the causes that led to ^'^bjects. 
Edward's irritation, and provoked him to impolitic vio- 
lence, was the thought that the nation did not trust him. 
From the beginning of the reign he had laboured inde- 
fatigably for their good ; he had amended their laws, 
and had given them what, to all intents and purposes, 
was a new and free constitution. He felt that he had a 
right to their confidence, and a right to direct, if not also 
to control, the mechanism which he had created. But as 
yet it was only thirty years since the Battle of Evesham. 
Men were still alive who remembered the countless ter- 
giversations of Henry III., and who, so warned, could 
scarcely help suspecting that Edward in the hour of need 
would repudiate his obligations, as his father had done. 
They did not profess to be satisfied with the act of con- 
firmation which Edward sealed at Ghent on November 5, 
1297. As soon as he returned from Flanders, in the fol- 
lowing year, the earls insisted on a renewal of Re-confir- 
the act, and, before they would join him in the ^^^'^^ °^ 
Scottish war, the king had to promise to grant Charters, 
it. In March 1299 the promise was fulfilled, but the con- 
firmation was even now regarded as incomplete. The 
enforcement of the charter of the forests involved a new 
survey of the forests, and the king, when he promised 
that this should be done, made a distinct reservation of 
the rights of the crown, and of some questions which 
had just been referred to the court of Rome. The re- 
servation appeared to the people to be an evident token 
of insincerity ; and to calm the excitement Edward, two 
months afterwards, executed an unconditional confirma- 

M.H. R 



242 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. i 300-1. 

tion. Still, however, it was declared that the forest re- 
forms were intentionally delayed; and in a full parlia- 
ment, held at London in March 1300, the confirmation 
was repeated, additional articles being embodied in an 
important act called * The articles upon the charters.' 
In consequence of these the survey of the forests was 
made and the report of the survey presented to a parlia- 
ment held at Lincoln in January 1301, at which all the 
old animosities threatened to revive, and the barons, 
backed by the commons, and with Archbishop Win- 
chelsey at their head, subjected the king to a pressure 
which he felt most bitterly and never forgave. 

Again he was in grievous want of money. The Pope 
had claimed the overlordship of Scotland, and it was of 
p^ J the utmost importance that he should receive 

claims over a United and unhesitating answer from the 
assembled nation. In spite of all the con- 
cessions that Edward had made so reluctantly, show- 
ing by his very reluctance that he intended to keep 
them, a new list of articles was presented as con- 
ditions on which money would be granted. Nay, even 
if the king agreed to the articles, the Archbishop, on 
the part of the clergy, would consent to no grant that 
the Pope had not sanctioned. Again Edward yielded, 
although he refused to admit the article in which the 
Pope's consent was mentioned. It was by thus yielding 
probably that he obtained from the whole assembled 
baronage a distinct denial of the Papal claims over 
Scotland. But the prelates and clergy did not join in 
the letter addressed in consequence to the Pope ; and 
Quarrel of Edward, putting the two things together, 
Edward chose to regard the archbishop as a traitor 

with Arch- . . . . -. . ,_,,., , 

bishop m mtention if not m act. The knight who 

Wincheisey. -^^^ presented to him the articles at Lincoln 
was sent for a short time to prison, as a concession per- 



A.D. 1302-4. Edward I. 243 

haps to Walter Langton, whose dismissal had been 
asked for. Winchelsey's punishment was delayed as long 
as Pope Boniface lived; but, when Clement V. in 1305 
succeeded him, the Archbishop was formally accused, 
summoned to Rome, and suspended, nor was he allowed 
to return to England during the remainder of the reign. 
This quarrel is a sad comment on the conduct of two 
great men, both of whom had at heart the welfare of 
England; but if the balance must be struck between 
them it inclines in favour of Edward. He may have 
been somewhat vindictive, but his adversary had taken 
cruel advantage of his needs, had credited him with un- 
worthy motives, and with a guile of which he knew him- 
self to be innocent ; and the archbishop had, in order to 
humiliate him, laid him open to the most arrogant as- 
sumptions on the part of the Pope. Winchelsey wished 
to be a second Langton; Edward was not, and was in- 
capable of becoming, a second John. 

The Parliament of Lincoln closes the constitutional 
drama of the reign ; but two or three minor points in 
connexion with what has gone before may Edward and 
be mentioned here. In 1303 and 1304 Ed- the foreign 

, . . , . - merchants. 

ward was agam m great straits for money, 
and he did not wish to be again subjected to the treat- 
ment which he had endured at Lincoln. In searching 
for the means of raising a revenue he recurred to the 
same source from which he had obtained the custom of 
wool at the beginning of his reign, the assistance of the 
merchants. He called together the foreign merchants in 
1 303 and offered them certain privileges of trading, on 
the condition that they should consent to pay import 
duties. They agreed ; and, although an as- -j-he New 
sembly of English representatives from the Custom. 
.mercantile towns refused to join in the arrangement, 
the institution held good. The ' New Custom,' the 



244 I^J^^ Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1305. 

origin of our import duties, was established without the 
consent of parhament, although not in direct contraven- 
tion of the Act of 1297, for it was a special agreement 
made with the consent of the payers and in consideration 
of immunities received. In 1304 he adopted an expedient 
even more hazardous, and collected a tallage from the 
royal demesne ; yet even here he avoided breaking the 
letter of his promise. Such tallage was not expressly 
renounced in 1297, and it was now sanctioned by the 
consent of the baronage, who raised money from their 
vassals in the same way. In 1305 he did a still more 
imprudent and dangerous act, in obtaining from Clement 
V. a formal absolution from the engagements taken in 
1297. Except in a slight modification of the forest regu- 
lations, which was perhaps made rather as a demonstra- 
tion of his power than as a real readjustment of the 
law, he took no advantage of this absolution. These 
three facts, however, remain on record as illustrations of 
Edward's chief weakness, the legal captiousness, which 
was the one drawback' on his greatness. The last was 
too grievously justified by the morality of the time, and 
proves that in one respect at least Edward was not before 
other men of the age. 

We turn now to trace the course of events which had 
so powerfully affected the king's action during these 
Rebellion in Critical years. We saw him in 1294 preparing 
u^d^er ^'^^ ^^ expedition to France, which was de- 

Madoc. layed until 1297 by troubles in Wales and 

Scotland, and by the political crisis on_3vhich we have 
dwelt so long. The Welsh revolt under Madoc, a kins- 
man of the last princes, involved an expedition which 
Edward himself in the winter of 1294 led into Wales. 
It was an unseasonable undertaking, and attended with 
no great success. Madoc was, however, taken prisoner 
in 1295, and the rebellion came to an end. The Scot- 



A. D. 1295- Edzvard I. 245 

tish troubles were more general and lasted much 
longer. 

John Balliol had from the beginning of his reign felt 
himself in a false position, distracted between his duties 
to Edward as his suzerain and patron, and his Summons of 
duties to his subjects. By a curious coinci- Edward to 
dence Edward had summoned him to appear as 
a vassal in his court to answer the complaints of the Earl 
of Fife, in the very year that he himself was summoned 
to appear at Paris to answer the complaints of the Nor- 
mans. The neglect and contempt with which Balliol was 
treated may have embittered his feelings towards Edward, 
yet in 1294 he had been the foremost of the barons in 
offering help against France. But it is clear that he was 
not a man of strong will or decided views ; that he could 
not easily bring himself to break with Edward, and so 
throw himself on the support of the Scottish baronage, 
and that even Edward's support did not make him 
strong enough to defy them. He halted between the two 
and lost his hold on both. In 1295 the Scottish lords 
determined, in imitation of the French court, to institute 
a body of twelve peers who were practically to control the 
action of Balliol, and opened negotiations for an alliance 
with France. Such an alliance was then a Alliance of 
new thing, but in its consequences it was one Scotland 

- , . . n r T 1 With France. 

of the most important mfluences of mediseval 
history, for it not only turned the progress of Scottish 
civilisation and politics into a French channel, leading 
the Scots to imitate French institutions, as they had 
hitherto copied those of England, but gave to the French 
a most effective assistance in every quarrel with England, 
down to the seventeenth century. As soon as Edward 
learned that such a negotiation was in progress he de- 
manded that, until peace should be made between Philip 
and himself, the border castles of Scotland should be 



246 The Early Plantagenets. a.d, 1295-8. 

placed in his hands. This was at once refused, and war 
broke out. In March 1296 Edward took and sacked 
Scottish Berwick, and the Scots threatened CarUsle. 

war. The unfortunate BaUiol seeing himself at last 

compelled to choose between the two evils, renounced 
his allegiance to Edward and almost immediately paid 
the penalty of his temerity. The Earl Warenne won a 
great victory at Dunbar in April, and took Edinburgh ; 
Surrender Balliol Surrendered in July, and was obliged 
of Balliol to to resign the crown to his conqueror. The 
^^"^ ' Scottish regalia were carried to England. The 
coronation-stone, which tradition identified with the stone 
on which the patriarch Jacob had rested his head at 
Bethel, was removed from Scone to Westminster. The 
chief nobles of Scotland were led away as hostages, 
and Scotland, if not subdued, was so far cowed into 
silence that during 1297 Edward thought it safe to leave 
it under the government of the Earl Warenne. Sir 
William Wallace, the somewhat obscure and mythical 
hero of Scottish liberation, remained, however, in arms 
against him, and he in September defeated the Earl 
Warenne at Cambuskenneth, and drove the English out 
of the country. Edward's expedition to France, so long 
Truce be- delayed, terminated in March 1 298 in a truce 
lajida^"^" °^ ^^*-' y63-rs, which was renewed in 1299 and 
Scotland. turned into a peace in 1303. As a pledge of 
the arrangement Edward married Margaret, the sister of 
Philip, in 1299. The Scots thus lost at first the active 
help of their new ally. Immediately on his return Ed- 
ward resumed the attack upon them, and the victory won 
at Falkirk in July 1298 proved his continued superiority, 
while it served to stimulate the national aspirations of 
the Scots and, what was even more important, taught 
them that, if they were still to be free, they must learn to 
act as a united people. 

Wallace's victorv at Cambuskenneth had earned for 



A.D. 1298-1303. Edzvard I. 247 

him the jealousy instead of the confidence of the Scottish 
nobles ; the defeat at Falkirk was made an Affairs in 
excuse for declining his leadership and cling- ffter the fall 
ing to the shadowy royalty of the imprisoned <^f Bailiol. 
Balliol. They chose a council of regency to govern 
Scotland in his name. Three regents were elected ; the 
bishop of St. Andrew's was one ; the other two were 
John Comyn, lord of Badenoch, and Robert Bruce, Earl 
of Carrick ; sons of two of the lords who had competed 
for the crown when Balliol was chosen. Wallace was 
not even named. Some small successes now fell to the 
Scots : in 1299 they compelled the English garrison in 
Stirling Castle to capitulate; in 1300 they foiled the in- 
vading army by avoiding a pitched battle, and, at the 
close of the campaign, obtained by the mediation of 
the French a truce which lasted till the summer of 
1 301. It was just then that Boniface VIII. had laid 
claim to the suzerainty of Scotland, and Edward's time 
was spent during the truce in obtaining from his barons 
a unanimous declaration against that claim. This, as we 
saw, was done in the parliament of Lincoln. Although 
the papal argument was one to which Edward could 
not refuse to listen, Boniface's influence with Arch- 
bishop Winchelsey gave him more trouble than the 
illusory claim. 

The Scottish campaign of 1301 was a repetition of 
that of the preceding year ; Edward spent the winter in 
the country and built a castle at Linlithgow; and another 
truce was made, which lasted to the winter of 1302. 

The conclusion of peace with France in 1303 left 
Edward free to direct all his strength against Scotland ; 
and the Scots, under Comyn as regent, were ^^^ ^j ^ 
now in better condition to resist. They had of Edward 
defeated the English army under Sir John 
Segrave in February, and were preparing for greater 
exertions, when the news arrived that not only the Pope 



248 The Early Plajitagenets. a.d. 1303-5. 

but the French had deserted them. No provision in 
their favour was contained in the treaty of peace ; and 
Edward was already in the country in full force. The 
year 1303 appeared to be a fatal year to the hopes of 
Scotland. Edward marched the whole length of the 
country as far north as the Moray Frith, and within sight 
of Caithness. Stirling alone of all the castles of the 
land was left in the possession of the native people, and 
after a futile attempt under the walls of Stirling to 
intercept the invader, they seem to have given up all 
idea of resistance. The so-called governors of the Scots 
surrendered and submitted on condition of having their 
lives, liberties, and estates secured ; a few patriotic men 
were excepted from the benefit of the act, the chief of 
whom was Wallace, against whom as the leading spirit 
of liberty Edward's indignation burned most hotly, and 
whom the selfish and jealous lords cared least to protect. 
Stirling, after a brave resistance, surrendered in July and 
Scotland seemed to be at last subdued. The hero Wal- 
Captureand ^'^^^•) taken by treachery in 1305, was sent to 
execution of Loudou to be tried and put to death as a 

Wallace. . ^_,, . ^ , . 

traitor. Ihe execution of this sentence is 
one of the greatest blots upon Edward's character as a- ■ 
high-minded prince. Only the profound conviction that 
his own claims over Scotland were indisputably legal and 
that all the misery and bloodshed which had followed the 
renewal of the war must justly be charged upon Wallace 
— a conviction akin in origin to the other mistakes which 
we have traced in Edward's great career — can have over- 
come the feeling of admiration and sympathy which he 
must have felt for so brave a man. 

Wallace perished in 1305. In the same year Edward 
drew up a new constitution for Scotland, dividing the 
country into sheriffdoms like the English counties and 
providing machinery for the representation of the Scots 



A. D. 1306-7. Edivard L 249 

at the meetings of the Enghsh parliament. But the ar- 
rangement was very shortHved. Scarcely four months 
had elapsed when the new and more success- Edward's 
ful hero of Scottish history, Robert Bruce, ^utTonTr'" 
declared himself. He was the son of the Scotland. 
regent Earl of Carrick, but had hitherto clung to the 
English interest, in the hope that Edward would at last 
set him in the place of BalHol, When the new measures 
for the government of Scotland were drawn up, disap- 
pointment, mingled perhaps with the shame which Wal- 
lace's death must have inspired, led him to quit the 
court and return to Scotland. At Dumfries, Return of 
early in 1306, he slew John Comyn, the late B°ucTto 
regent, whom he could not induce to join Scotland. 
him. He then gathered round him all whom he could 
prevail on to trust him ; and by his energy and military 
ability took all his enemies by surprise. In March he 
was crowned at Scone. 

His success was too great to be permanent ; before 
the close of the summer Aymer de Valence, Edward's 
lieutenant, had driven him into the islands, Reverses of 
and the king himself soon followed and put Bruce, 
an end to all collective opposition. Still Bruce was 
active, and defied all attempts to crush him. Constantly 
put to flight and as constantly reappearing, he kept the 
English armies on the alert during the winter of 1306 
and the spring of 1307 ; and in July, on his last march 
from Carlisle against him, king Edward died. 

Edward had just passed into his sixty-ninth year. He 
was older than any king who reigned in England before 
him, nor did any of his successors until Eliza- Death of 
beth attain the same length of years. His Edward I. 
life had been one, in its earlier and later portions, of 
great exertion, both bodily and mental \ and constant 
labour and irritation had made him during his latter years 



250 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1307. 

somewhat harsh and austere. His son Edward gave no 
hopes of a happy or useful reign ; he had already chosen 
his friends in defiance of his father's wishes, and had 
been rebuked by the king himself for misconduct towards 
his ministers. Edward had outlived, too, most of his 
early companions in arms ; he saw a generation spring- 
ing up who had not passed through the training which 
he and they had had, and who were more luxurious and 
Hischarac- extravagant, less polished and refined than 
ter and the men of his youth. An earnestly religious 

man, he had been unable to keep on good 
terms with the great scholar and divine who filled the 
see of Canterbury, or even with the Pope himself. The 
people for whom he had laboured and cared were scarcely 
as yet able to understand how much they had gained by 
his toil ; how even in his foreign undertakings he was 
fighting the battles of England and earning for them and 
for their posterity a place which should never again be lost 
in the councils of Europe. But though his bodily strength 
was gone his mental vigour was not abated, nor his 
belief in the justice of his cause. When he made his 
solemn vow, at the knighting of Prince Edward in 1 306, 
to avenge the murder of Comyn and punish the broken 
faith of the Scots, he looked on them not as a noble 
nation fighting for liberty, but as a perjured and re- 
bellious company of outlaws, whom it would be a shame 
to him as a king and as a knight not to punish. The sin 
of breaking faith, the crime which his early lessons had 
taught him to think the greatest which could be com- 
mitted by a king, the temptation to which he believed 
himself to have overcome, and which he even inculcated 
on posterity by the motto ' Pactum serva ' on his tomb, — 
in his eyes justified all the cruelty and oppression which 
marked his treatment of the Scots. Cruel it was, what- 
ever allowances are to be made for the exaggeration of 



A. D. 1307. Edwai'd 11. 251 

contemporary writers or for the savageness of contem- 
porary warfare. Yet it was not the bitter cruelty of the 
tyrant directed against the hberty of a free nation. 

Edward's death took place at Burgh-on-the-Sands, 
in Cumberland, on the 7th of July, 1307. His character 
we have tried to draw in tracing the history of his acts. 
His work remains in the history of the country and the 
people whom he loved. 



CHAPTER Xn. 

EDWARD II. 

Character of Edward II. — Piers Gaveston — The Ordinances — Tho- 
mas of Lancaster — The Despensers — The king's ruin and death. 

It is not often that a strong son succeeds a strong 
father, and where that is the case the result is not always 
salutary. If Edward I. had left a son like Reaction- 
himself, a new fabric of despotism might have ^^ya^^^^ 
been raised on the foundation of strong govern- li. 
ment which he had laid. Sometimes such alternations 
have worked well ; a weak administration following on a 
strong one has enabled the nation to advance all the 
more firmly and strongly for the discipline to which it has 
been subjected ; and a strong reign following a weak one 
has taught them how to obtain from the strong suc- 
cessor the consolidation of reforms won from the 
weakness of the predecessor. But more commonly 
the result has been a simple reaction, and the weak son 
has had to bear the consequences of his father's exercise 
of power, the strong son has had to repair the mischief 
caused by his father's weakness. The case of Edward 
II., however, does not come exactly under either gene- 
ralisation. It was no mere reaction that caused his 



252 The Early Plantageiiets. a. d. 1307. 

reign to stand in so strong contrast to his father's. 
Instead of following out his father's plans he re- 
versed them ; and his fate was the penalty exacted by 
hatreds which he had drawn upon himself, not the result 
of a reaction upon a policy which he had inherited. He 
cast away at the beginning of the reign his father's friends, 
and he made himself enemies where he ought to have 
looked for friends, in his own household and within the 
narrowest circle of home. 

Edward II. was the fourth son of Edward I. and 
Eleanor. John, their eldest boy, had died in 1272 ; 
Personal Henry, the next, died in 1274; Alfonso, the 
tastes and third, lived to be twelve years old, and died in 

lavountes of ' •' ' 

Edward II. 1 285. Edward was born in 1284, at Carnarvon, 
became heir-apparent on his brother's death, and in 1301 
was made Earl of Chester and Prince of Wales. Losing 
his mother in 1 290, he was deprived of the early teaching 
which might have changed his whole history. His 
father, although he showed his characteristic care in 
directing the management of his son's household, in 
choosing his companions, and rebuking his faults, was 
far too busy to devote to him the personal supervision 
which would have trained him for government and 
secured his affections. He grew up to dread rather than 
to love him, hating his father's ministers as spies and 
checks upon his pleasures, and spending his time in 
amusements unbecoming a prince and a knight. His 
most intimate friend. Piers Gaveston, the son of an 
old Gascon servant of his father, had been assigned 
Piers ^vcix by the king as his companion, and had 

Gaveston. gained a complete mastery over him. Gaves- 
ton was an accomplished knight, brave, ambitious, in- 
solent and avaricious, like the foreign favourites of Henry 
III. Edward, although a handsome, strong lad, did not 
care to practise feats of arms or to follow the pursuits of 



A. D. 1307. Edward 11. 253 

war. He was fond of hunting and country life, averse to 
public labour, but splendid to extravagance in matters 
of feasting and tournament. He was indolent, careless 
about making new friends or enemies ; the only strong 
feeling which marked him was his obstinate champion- 
ship of the men whom he believed to be attached to 
himself. Edward was not a vicious man, but he was 
very foolish, idle, and obstinate, and there was nothing 
about him that served to counterbalance these faults or 
invite sympathy with him in his misfortunes. Edward I. 
some months before his death had found out this to his' 
sorrow. He saw in the influence that Gaveston had won 
a sign that the scenes were to be repeated which, as he so 
well remembered, had marked the stormy period of his 
own youth. He had banished Gaveston from court and 
made him swear not to return without his leave. No 
sooner was he dead than the favourite was recalled, and 
by his return began that series of miseries which over- 
whelmed himself first, and then his master, and the con- 
sequences of which ran on in long succession until the 
great house of Plantagenet came to an end. 

Edward was absent when his father died, but within 
a few days he had rejoined the army, was received as 
king, without waiting for coronation, by the Peace with 
English and Scottish lords, and proclaimed Scotland. 
his royal peace. One of his father's last injunctions, that 
he should promptly and persistently follow up the war, 
was set aside from the first ; Aymer de Valence was 
made commander and governor of Scotland, and the 
king himself moved southwards. Another of his father's 
commands was set at nought directly after : Gaveston 
was recalled and raised to the earldom of Cornwall. 
Walter Langton, the late king's treasurer and chief 
minister, was removed from office and imprisoned, and 
the chancellor also was displaced. Edward I. was not yet 



254 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 130S. 

buried, and his son's first parliament, called at North- 
ampton, in October 1307, was asked to provide money 
for the expenses of the funeral and the coronation ; for 
already it was said the favourite had got hold of the 
treasure and was sending it to his foreign kinsfolk. But 
the jealous nobles were not inclined to hurry matters as 
yet ; the parliament granted money ; Edward I. was 
solemnly buried ; and orders were given to prepare for 
the coronation in February 1308. 

The young king had been betrothed to Isabella of 
France, the daughter of Philip the Fair. He wished that 
Marriage of ^^^ young bride should be crowned with him, 
the king and SO crosscd over to Boulogne to marry her. 
Isabella of The indignation of the lords and of the 
France. country at the recall and promotion of Gaves- 

ton was fanned into a flame by the announcement that, 
as it was necessary to appoint a regent during the king's 
short absence, the Earl of Cornwall with full and even 
peculiar powers was appointed to the place. It became 
clear that the coronation could scarcely take place with- 
out an uproar. 

Nor was the question of coronation itself without some 
difficulties ; for Archbishop Winchelsey, although invited 
The Coro- ^^ ^^® ^^^ king, had not yet returned from 
nation. banishment, and it was by no means safe for 

any other prelate to act in his stead. After a little delay 
Winchelsey consented to empower a substitute ; and 
Edward II. and Isabella were crowned on the 25th of 
February by the Bishop of Winchester. The form of the 
coronation oath taken on this occasion, perhaps for the 
first time in this shape, is worth careful remark. In it the 
king promises to maintain the ancient laws, to keep the 
The corona- pcace of God and the people, and to do right 
tlon oath. judgment and justice. So much was found in 
the older formula ; but another question was put : 'Will 



A.D. i3o8. Edzvard 11. 255 

you consent to hold and keep the laws and righteous 
customs which the community of your realm shall have 
chosen, and will you defend them and strengthen them to 
the honour of God, to the utmost of your power ? ' If, as 
is supposed, these words were new, they seemed to con- 
tain a recognition of the fact that the community of the 
realm had now entered into their place as entitled to 
control by counsel and consent the legislative action and 
policy of the king. And so construed they form a valu- 
able comment on the results of the last reign, which had 
seen the community organised in a perfect parliament 
and admitted to a share of the responsibilities of govern- 
ment. The lords heard them with interest ; even if they 
had been used at the coronation of Edward I. few were 
old enough to remember them. They saw in them either 
an earnest of good government or a lever by which they 
themselves could remedy the evils of misgovernment, and 
they proceeded to try the maiden weapon against the 
favourite whom they now hated as well as feared. 

Gaveston had at first tried to propitiate the more 
powerful lords of the court, especially Earl Thomas of 
Lancaster and Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln. 
The latter was an old and trusted servant of Earl of 
Edward L Thomas of Lancaster was the son Lancaster. 
of Earl Edmund of Lancaster, the younger son of Henry 
HL, who had been titular King of Sicily; his mother 
was Blanche, the Queen Dowager of Navarre, whose 
daughter by her first husband had married Philip the 
Fair. He was thus cousin to the king and uncle to the 
queen ; he possessed the great estates with which his 
grandfather and uncle had founded the Lancaster earl- 
dom ; he was Earl of Leicester and Derby also, and had 
thus succeeded to the support of those vassals of the 
Montforts and the Ferrers who had sustained them in 
their struggle against the crown ; and he was the son-in- 



256 The Eaidy Plaiitagenets. a. d. 1308. 

law and heir of Henry de Lacy. Distantly following out 
the policy of Earl Simon, he had set himself up as a friend 
of the clergy and of the liberties of the people. Person- 
ally he was a haughty, vicious, and selfish man, whom 
the mistakes and follies of Edward II. raised into the fame 
of a popular champion, and whom his bitter sufferings 
and cruel death promoted to the rank of a martyr and 
a saint. But he was not a man of high principle or great 
capacity, as the result proved. 

No sooner had Gaveston made good his position than 
by his wanton insolence he incurred the hatred of Earl 
Thomas, and by the same folly provoked the 
and the animosity of the Earl of Pembroke, the king's 

Earls. cousin, of the Earl of Hereford, his brother-in- 

law, and of the strong and unscrupulous Earl of Warwick, 
Guy Beauchamp. Some of them he had defeated in a 
tournament ; nicknames he bestowed on all. One good 
friend Edward had tried to secure him; he had married 
him to a sister of Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, the king's 
nephew and their common playfellow ; but even Earl 
Gilbert only cared sufficiently for him to try to mediate 
in his favour ; he would not openly take his side. The 
storm rose steadily. Shortly after the coronation a great 
council was held in which his promotion was the chief 
topic of debate, and on the 1 8th of May he was banished. 
), . , Edward tried to lighten the blow by appoint- 

Banishment . ,. _ ._, , n, i 

of Gaves- mg him lieutenant of Ireland, and besought 
^^^' the interposition of the King of France and 

the Pope in his favour. All the business of the kingdom 
Schism was delayed by the hostility of the king and 

ki^ngandthe ^^^ great lords. Money was wanted, and 
lords. could be got only through the Italian bankers, 

whom the people looked on as extortioners. The 
divided Scots were left to fight their own battles. Such 
a state of things could not last long. Edward had to 



A.D. 1309-10. Edward II. 257 

meet his parliament in April 1309. He wanted money, 
the country wanted reform, but the king desired the re- 
turn of Gaveston even more than money, and the nation 
dreaded it more than they desired reform. When the 
estates met they presented to Edward a schedule of 
eleven articles : if these were granted they would grant 
money. The articles concerned several important matters; 
the exaction of corn and other provisions by the king's 
agents under the name of purveyance, the maladministra- 
tion of justice and usurped jurisdictions ; but the most 
important was one touching the imposts on wine, wool, and 
other merchandise which had been instituted by Edward 
I. in 1303, after consultation with the merchants. Edward, 
however, thought little of the bearing of the request; he 
proposed to agree to it if he might recall Gaveston, 
The parliament refused to listen to him, and he adjourned 
the discussion until July. Then in a session of the ba- 
ronage at Stamford he yielded the points in question, 
and received the promised subsidy. But he had already 
recalled Gaveston and by one means or another had ob- 
tained the tacit consent of all the great lords Recall of 
except the Earl of Warwick. Scarcely two Gaveston. 
months had elapsed when the storm rose again. The 
king summoned the earls to council. The Earl of Lan- 
caster refused to meet the Earl of Cornwall. Gradually 
the parties were re-formed as before, and the quarrel 
assumed larger dimensions. Gaveston was still the great 
offence, but the plan now broached by the lords extended 
to the whole administrative work of the kingdom. 

At the parliament which met in March 1310 a new 
scheme of reform was promulgated, which was framed on 
the model of that of 1258 and the Provisions p ,• 
of Oxford. It was determined that the task of 1310. 
of regulating the affairs of the realm and of the kinoes 
household should be committed to an elected body of 

M. H. S 



258 The Early Plantageiiets, a.d. 131 i. 

twenty-one members, or Ordainers, the chief of whom 
was Archbishop Winchelsey. Both parties were repre- 
sented, the royal party by the earls of Gloucester, Pem- 
broke, and Richmond, the opposition by the Earls of 
Lincoln, Lancaster, Hereford, Warwick, and Arundel. 
But the preponderance both in number and influence 
was against Gaveston. They were empowered to remain 
in office until Michaelmas 131 1, and to make ordinances 
for the good of the realm agreeable to the tenor of 
the king's coronation oath. The whole administration 
of the kingdom thus passed into their hands ; and 
Edward, seeing himself superseded, joined the army now 
engaged in war with Scotland, and in company with 
Gaveston continued on the border until the Ordainers 
were ready to report. During this time the Earl of 
Lincoln, who had been left as regent, died, and the 
Earl of Gloucester took his place. The Ordainers 
immediately on their appointment issued six articles 
directing the observance of the charters, the careful 
collection of the customs, and the arrest of the foreign 
merchants ; but the great body of the ordinances was 
reserved for the parliament which met in August 1 3 1 1 . 

The famous document or statute known as the Ordi- 
nances of 1 3 1 1 contained forty-one clauses, all aimed at 
existing abuses. Some of these abuses were 
nances of old long-standing evils, such as the miscar- 
^2^^- riage and delay of justice, the misconduct of 

officials, and the maladministration and misapplication 
of royal property. Others were founded on the policy of 
the late reign, which Edward's ministers had perverted 
and abused ; the Ordainers had no hesitation in declaring 
the customs duties established by Edward I. to be illegal 
and contrary to the charter. But two classes of enact- 
ments are of more special interest. Four whole clauses 
were devoted to the punishment of the favourite and 
of those courtiers who had cast in their lot with him. 



A.D. 1311. Edivard II. 259 

Gaveston had stolen the king's heart from his people, 
and led him into every sort of tyranny and dishonesty; 
the Lord Henry de Beaumont, to whom Edward had 
given the Isle of Man, and the lady de Vescy, his sister, 
were little better ; the Friscobaldi, the Italian bankers 
who received the customs, were the enemies of the people 
and mere instruments of oppression. Gaveston was to 
be banished for life, Beaumont to be expelled from the 
council, and the Friscobaldi to be sent home. Not 
content with this, the Ordainers further enacted some 
very important limitations on the king's power. All the 
great officers of state were to be appointed with the counsel 
and consent of the baronage, and to be sworn in parlia- 
ment ; the king was not to go to war or to quit the 
kingdom without the consent of the barons in parlia- 
ment ; parliaments were to be called every year, and the 
king's servants were to be brought to justice. The articles 
thus seem to sum up not only the old and new grievances, 
but the ideas of government entertained by the Ordainers : 
they are to punish the favourite, to remedy the points in 
which the charter has failed, and to restrain the power of 
the king. But the power is only transferred from the 
king to the barons. There is no provision analogous to 
the principle laid down by Edward I., that the ^ 

, , . ,,,..., , , Control of 

whole nation shall jom m the tasks and re- the king by 
sponsibilities of national action. The baron- ^^^ barons. 
age, not the three estates in parliament, are to admonish, 
to restrain, to compel the king. 

Edward, after such a struggle as he could make to 
save Gaveston— a matter which was to him far more im- 
portant than any of the legal questions involved ^^j^^ 
in the Ordinances— consented that they should struggle of 
become law, intending perhaps to obtain abso- favour of 
lution when it was needed, or to allege that Gaveston. 
his consent was given under compulsion. He went back 



26o The Eaidy Plantageiiets. a.d. 13 12. 

into the North, was rejoined by Gaveston, and after some 
short consideration annulled the ordinances which were 
made against him. The barons immediately on hearing 
of this prepared to enforce the law in arms. Winchelsey 
excommunicated the favourite ; the . king left no means 
untried to save him. After a narrow escape at Newcastle, 
where he lost his baggage and the vast collection of 
jewels which he had accumulated, many of them belong- 
ing to the hereditary hoard of the crown, Gaveston was 
besieged in Scarborough Castle. In May 13 12 he sur- 
rendered, and was conducted by the Earl of Pembroke 
into the South, to await his sentence in parliament. His 
enemies, however, were too impatient to wait for justice. 
The Earl of Warwick carried him off whilst Pembroke 
was off his guard, and he was beheaded in the presence 
Death of of the Earl of Lancaster. It is more easy to 
Gaveston. account for than to justify the hatred which 
the earls felt towards Gaveston. His conduct had been 
offensive, his influence was no doubt dangerous, but the 
actual mischief done by him had been small ; neither he 
nor Edward had exercised power with sufficient freedom 
as yet to merit such a punishment, and no policy of mere 
caution or apprehension could excuse the cruelty of the 
act. It was a piece of vile personal revenge, for insults 
which any really great man would have scorned to 
avenge. 

From the time of Gaveston's death the unhappy 
king remained for some years the sport or tool of con- 
„, . tending parties. He was indeed incompetent 

Changes in => i r 

theadminis- to reign alone, or to choose ministers who 
could rule in his name. The Earl of Pem- 
broke, Aymer de Valence, the son of that William of 
Lusignan, Henry III.'s half-brother, who was banished 
in 1258, -first attempted to take the reins. Walter 
Langton had made his peace and become treasurer 



A.D. 1313. Edward II. 261 

again ; and on the death of Archbishop Winchelsey, in 
1 31 3, Walter Reynolds, the king's old tutor and present 
chancellor, became primate. But these were not men to 
withstand the great weight of the opposition. Thomas 
of Lancaster, who on the death of Henry de Lacy had 
added the earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury to the three 
which he already held, treated on equal terms with the 
king as a belUgerent. The mediation of the clergy 
brought the two together at the close of 131 2, and in the 
autumn of 131 3 a general pacification was brought about, 
followed by an amnesty and a liberal supply of money 
in Parliament. The Ordinances were recognised as the 
law of the land ; the birth of an heir to the crown was 
hailed as a good omen, and better hopes were enter- 
tained for the future. The war with Scotland was to be 
resumed, and with secure peace order in the government 
must follow. 

The Scots had been indeed left alone too long. Short 
truces, desultory warfare, the defeat of any spasmodic 
effort on the part of the English by a deter- Successes 
mined policy on the Scottish side of evading gj^^e^i^ 
battle, had resulted in a great increase of Scotland, 
strength in the hands of Robert Bruce. He had taken 
advantage of the domestic troubles of England to re- 
cover one by one the strongholds of his kingdom. It 
was believed that he had intrigued both with Gaveston 
and with Lancaster. The Castle of Linlithgow came into 
his hands in 131 1, Perth in 131 2, Roxburgh and Edin- 
burgh in 1 3 13. Stirling, almost the only fortress left in the 
hands of the English, was besieged, and had promised 
to surrender if not relieved before midsummer 13 14. 
Edward prepared to take the command of his forces and 
to raise the siege. But it was no part of Lancaster's policy 
to support him. Taking advantage of the article of the 
Ordinances which forbade the king to go to war without 



262 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 13 14- 16. 

the consent of the baronage in Parliament, he declined 
to obey the summons to war until Parliament had spoken, 
Edward protested that there was no time ; Lancaster and 
his confederate earls stood aloof. The King and Pem- 
broke, with such of the barons as they could influence, 
and a great host of Enghsh warriors, who had no confi- 
Battie of dence in their commander, met the Scots at 
Bannock- Bannockburn on the 24th of June, and were 
shamefully defeated, Edward lost all control 
over the country in consequence. The young Earl of 
Gloucester, whose adhesion had been a tower of strength 
to him, fell in the battle ; the Earl of Pembroke, who had 
fled with him, shared the contempt into which he fell. 
Lancaster was practically supreme ; he and his fellows, 
the survivors of the Ordainers, appointed and displaced 
ministers, put the king on an allowance, and removed his 
personal friends and attendants as they chose. In 131 6 
Lancaster was chosen official president of the royal coun- 
cil ; he was already commander-in-chief of the army. 
He now sought the support of the clergy, forced the king 
Despotism ^^ Order the execution of the Ordinances, 
of Lancas- and conducted himself as an irresponsible 

ter. 

ruler. But he had not a capacity equal to his 
ambition, and his greed of power served to expose his 
real weakness. He acted as a clog upon all national 
action ; he would not act with the king, for he hated him; 
he dared not act without him, lest his own failure should 
give his rivals the chance of overthrowing him. The 
country, notwithstanding his personal popularity, was 
miserable under him. The Scots plundered and ravaged 
as they chose. He would not engage in war. He would 
not attend parliament or council. The court became 
filled with intrigue. The barons split up into parties ; 
Edward, rejoicing in the removal of control, launched 
into extravagant expenditure, and began to form a 



A.D. 1 316-18. Edward II. 263 

new party of his own. With general anarchy it is no 
wonder that private war broke out, or that private 
war assumed the dimensions of pubhc war. The Coun- 
tess of Lancaster was carried off from her War of the 
husband ; the Earl of Warenne was accused ^'^^^^• 
and the king was suspected of conniving at the elope- 
ment. The earls went to war, Edward forbade Lancaster 
to stir, and Lancaster of course disobeyed the order. In 
the midst of all this Robert Bruce, in April 13 18, took 
Berwick. 

There were now three parties in the kingdom. Lan- 
caster had lost ground, but the king had gained none. 
The Earl of Pembroke had been gradually ronflict f 
alienated, and now aimed at acquiring power parties. 
for himself The death of the Earl of Gloucester had 
left his earldom to be divided between the husbands 
of his three sisters, Hugh le Despenser, Roger d'Amory, 
and Hugh of Audley. The division of the great estates 
was in itself sufficient to create a new division of parties. 
D'Amory and Pembroke framed a league for gaining 
influence over the king in conjunction with Sir Bartholo- 
mew Badlesmere, a bitter enemy of Lancaster. Hugh le 
Despenser, the father of the one just mentioned, took on 
liimself to reform the king's personal party, and was aided 
by the few barons and bishops whom Edward had been 
strong enough to promote. The capture of Berwick had 
one salutary effect : it stopped the private war, and 
shamed the three parties into a compromise ; -g^v- 
but the compromise was itself a proof of com- the loss of 
mon weakness. It was concluded in August ^^^'*^ " 
1 3 18, between Lancaster alone on his own part, and ten 
bishops and fourteen temporal lords as sureties for the 
king. It provided a new form of council — eight bishops, 
four earls, and four barons ; one other member was to be 
nominated by Lancaster, who did not deign to accept a 



264 The Early Plantagenets. a.d, isig: 

seat. But this constitution had no more permanence 
than the formen The official preponderance was main- 
tained by Pembroke and Badlesmere, and they could do 
nothing whilst the Earl of Lancaster continued to stand 
aloof. Edward in 1319 made a vain attempt to recover 
Berwick, but only gave the Scots an opportunity of invad- 
ing Yorkshire, and matters grew worse and worse. Men 
could not help seeing that even Edward himself could 
not mismanage matters more than they were bemg now 
mismanaged, and that, whether incapable or no, he had 
never yet had a chance of showing what capacity he had. 
The fate " of Gaveston might have warned any who 
counted on acquiring power by Edward's favour ; and in 
New favour- ^^^^ ^^^ Several years he remained unburdened 
ites of the and uncomfortcd by a confidential servant. 
But the waning popularity of Lancaster 
seemed now to render the position of the king's friend 
less hazardous, and an aspir-ant was found in the younger 
Hugh le Despenser. He was the grandson of that Hugh 
le Despenser, the justiciar of the baronial government^ 
who had fallen with Simon de Montfort at Evesharru 
His father, now the elder Hugh, had been a courtier and 
minister of Edward L, and had been throughout the 
early troubles of the reign faithful to Edward II., but he 
was regarded as a deserter by the barons and had a bitter 
personal enemy in the Earl of Lancaster. Father and 
The Des- ^*^^ were alike ambitious and greedy ; they 
pensers. showcd little regard for either the person or 

the reputation of their master, and sacrificed his interest 
whenever it came in competition with their own» The 
younger Hugh, like Piers Gaveston, was married to one 
of the heiresses of Gloucester, and had been appointed in 
1 318 chamberlain to the king under the government of 
compromise. Edward in his weakness and isolation 
clung tenaciously to these men ; they had inherited some 



A.D. 1319-21. Edward II. 265 

of the political ideas of the barons of 1258, and had per- 
haps an indistinct notion of overthrowing the influence 
of Lancaster by an alliance with the commons. The 
younger Hugh, at all events, from time to time uttered 
sentiments concerning the position of the king which were 
inconsistent with the theory of absolute royalty ; he had 
said that the allegiance sworn to the king was due to the 
crown rather than to the person of the sovereign, and 
that if the king inclined to do wrong it was the duty of 
the liegeman to compel him to do right. Another part 
of the programme of the Despensers involved a more 
distinct recognition of the right of parliament than had 
ever been put forth by Lancaster, and it would seem 
probable that they hoped by maintaining the theory of 
national action, as stated by Edward L, to strengthen 
their master's position, and through it to strengthen their 
own. So low, however, was the political morality of 
the time, that the same selfish objects were hidden un- 
der widely different professions. The Despensers had 
sadly miscalculated the force of the old prejudice against 
court favourites, and did not see how every step in ad- 
vance made them new enemies. The Earl of Lancaster 
saw in their unpopularity a chance of recovering his 
place as a national champion, and a quarrel among the 
coheirs of Gloucester gave the opportunity for an outcry. 
Hugh of Audley, who had married Piers Gaveston's 
widow, and who was therefore a rival and brother-in-law 
of Hugh le Despenser, showed some signs of contuma- 
cious conduct in the marches. The Earl of Hereford 
and Roger Mortimer, the Lord of Wigmore, declined to 
join in the measures necessary to reduce him to order, 
and refused to meet the Despensers in council ; and in a 
parliament which the king called to meet on the 15th 
of July, 1 32 1, the whole baronage turned against the 
favourites. Their attempts to influence the king, their 



266 TJie Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1322. 

greedy use of the king's name for their own purposes, the 
rash words of the younger Hugh, the vast acquisitions of 
his father, their unauthorised interference in the adminis- 
tration of government, and their perversion of justice 
were alleged as demanding condign punishment. 

The Earl of Hereford, Edward's brother-in-law, made 
the charge before the three estates, and the lords, ' peers 
Sentence ^^ ^^ land,' as they now perhaps for the first 
against the time Called themselves, passed the sentence 
of forfeiture and exile on the two. They were 
not to be recalled except by consent of parliament, and 
a separate act was passed to ensure the immunity of 
the prosecutors and the pardon of those who had taken 
up arms to overthrow them. This was Lancaster's last 
triumph, and it was very shortlived. In the month of 
October the Lady Badlesmere shut the gates of Leeds 
Castle against the queen, and Edward raised a force to 
avenge the insult offered to his wife. All the earls of his 
party joined him, and the Earl of Lancaster, who hated 
Badlesmere for his old rivalry, did not interfere to protect 
him. Finding himself for the first time at the head of a 
sufficient force, the king determined to enforce order in 
the marches and to avenge his iriends the Despensers. 
He marched against the border castles of the Earl of 
Hereford, Audley, and D'Amory. On receiving news of 
this Lancaster at once discovered his mistake, and called 
a meeting of his party — the good lords, .as they were 
called — at Doncaster. Both parties showed great energy, 
but the king had got the start. He obtained from the 
convocation of the clergy of Canterbury, under the influ- 
ence of the archbishop, his old tutor, a declaration that the 
War sentence against the Despensers was illegal, 

kfn^and and lost no time in forcing his way towards 

the barons. Hereford to punish the earl who had procured 
it. On his way he defeated the Mortimers. He took 



A.D. 1322. Edward II. 267 

Hereford ; and having reached Gloucester in triumph, 
on the nth of February, recalled his friends to his side. 
Lancaster and his party were not idle, but they under- 
rated the importance of the crisis and divided their 
forces. One part was sent to secure the king^s castle 
of Tickhill, the other, under Lancaster himself, moved 
slowly towards the south, Edward, in the hope of inter- 
cepting the latter division, moved northwards from Ciren- 
cester, and the earl, when he reached Burton-on-Trent, 
did not venture any farther. On the news of his flight 
his castles of Kenilworth and Tutbury surrendered, and 
Edward started in pursuit. The unfortunate earl had 
reached Boroughbridge on his way to his castle of 
Dunstanburgh, with his enemies close behind him, 
when he learned that his way was blocked by Sir 
Andrew Harclay, the governor of Carlisle, who was 
coming to meet the king. A battle ensued, in Battle of 
which the Earl of Hereford was slain, the Borough- 
forces of Lancaster were defeated, and the 
earl himself forced to surrender. He was taken on the 
17th of March, and on the 22nd was tried by the king's 
judges, in the presence of the hostile earls, in his own 
castle of Pomfret. He was condemned as a traitor. 
Evidence of his intrigues with the Scots was adduced 
to give colour to the sentence, and he was beheaded at 
once. So the blood of Gaveston was avenged, Execution 
and the tide of savage cruelty began to flow of Lancas- 
in a broader stream, to be avenged, like 
Lamech, seventy and sevenfold. At once the people, 
hating the Despensers and misdoubting Edward, de- 
clared that the martyr of Pomfret was worthy of canon- 
isation : miracles were wrought at his tomb ; it ulterior 
was a task worthy of heroes and patriots to ce"^ rth^'^" 
avenge his death. His name became a watch- execution. 
word of liberty ; the influence which he had laboured 



268 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1322. 

to build up became a rival interest to that of the crown. 
First, Edward II. and the Despensers fell before it; 
then, in the person of Henry IV., the heir of Lancaster 
swept from the throne the heir of Edward's unhappy 
traditions. In the next century the internecine struggle 
of the Roses wore out the force of the impulse, and yet 
enough was left to stain from time to time the scaffolds 
of the Tudors, long after the last male heir of the Plan- 
tagenets had perished. 

Some few of the other hostile barons perished in the 
first flush of the triumph ; Badlesmere, in particular, was 
Revocation taken and hanged. Roger D^Amory was dead. 
nan^es^f'^^' '^^^ Audleys wcrc spared. About thirty were 
1311- put to death ; many were imprisoned ; many 

more paid fines or forfeitures which helped to enrich the 
Despensers. Edward was now supreme, and took, as 
might be expected, the opportunity to undo all that his 
enemies had tried to do. In his first parliament, held at 
York, six weeks after the battle, he procured the revoca- 
tion of the Ordinances, and an important declaration on 
the part of the assembled estates that from henceforth 
' matters to be established for the estate of our lord the 
king and of his heirs, and for the estate of the realm 
and of the people, shall be treated, accorded, and estab- 
lished in parliaments by our lord the king and by the 
consent of the prelates, earls and barons, and commonalty 
of the realm, according as hath been hitherto accus- 
tomed.' No ordinances were to be made any more like 
the Ordinances of 131 1. The declaration, intended to 
secure the crown from the control of the barons, enun- 
ciates the theory of constitutional government. And thus 
the Despensers tried to turn the tables against their foes. 
But although they determined to annul the Ordinances 
they did not venture to withdraw the material benefits 
which the Ordinances had secured. The king, immediately 



A.D. 1323. Edward II. 269 

after the revocation, reissued in the form of an ordinance 
of his own some of the most beneficial provisions ; and 
the parhament responded by reversing the acts against 
the favourites and granting money for defence against 
the Scots. 

It was indeed high time, for such had been the 
course of recent events that the attitude of the two 
kingdoms was reversed, and England seemed Campaign 
more likely to become tributary to Scotland f^ Ae^^'^'^ 
than to exercise sovereignty over it. Edward's North. 
campaign was, however, as usual, unsuccessful. He 
narrowly escaped capture amongst the Yorkshire hills, 
and the whole county was in such alarm that he found it 
scarcely possible to hold a parliament at York. Nor did 
his troubles end there. Early in the following year he 
found that Sir Andrew Harclay, whom he had just made 
Earl of Carlisle, was negotiating treasonably with Robert 
Bruce ; he was taken, condemned, and executed. Well 
might the unhappy king throw himself more desperately 
than ever on the support of the Despensers, for he knew 
none others, even of those who had served him best or 
whom he had most richly rewarded, who were not ready 
to turn and betray him. With the Despe©sers he was 
safe, for they, he was sure, could only stand with him and 
must fall when he fell. One thing, however, he did, in 
itself wise and just — concluding with Scotland a truce for 
thirteen years. This was done in May 1323. Prudent as 
it was, it alienated from him the adventurers who like 
Henry de Beaumont were intent on carving out for them- 
selves counties in conquered Scotland. Every- -pruce wit} 
thing was interpreted in the worst sense Scotland. 
against him : the men who refused to follow him to 
war cried out against the peace ; and the men who had 
followed him to war deserted him. Thus, when he at 
last found himself without a rival in the kingdom, it 



2/0 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1323. 

seemed as if he were left alone to discover how great 
depths of abasement were still to be sounded; new 
calamities which, whoever really caused them, seemed 
to result from his own incapacity. In truth, partly owing 
to Edward's neglect of the duty of a king, and partly 
owing to the inveterate animosities following on the 
death of Lancaster, the tide of public and private hatred 
was too high to be long resisted. Yet the last impulse 
came from a quarter from which it might have been 
least expected and from which it was certainly least 
deserved. 

Edward, with all his faults, had been a kind husband 
and father ; but he had trusted his wife less implicitly 
Position than she desired to be trusted. In this he 

of*th^°^^'^^ was justified by the fact of her close re- 
queen, lationship to the Earl of Lancaster, and still 
more by the jealousy which she displayed towards his 
confidential ministers. Not only the Despensers but 
Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, the Treasurer, and Baldock, 
the Chancellor, were the objects of her settled aversion ; 
and she lent a ready ear to all who fancied that these 
men had injured them or stood in the way of their ad- 
vancement. The court contained many such men, who 
were ambitious of becoming ministers of state or bishops 
and ready to take either side for gain ; men who hated 
the Despensers, and who saw their own prospects 
bhghted by the fall of Lancaster. Regularly, as the 
tide had turned, as the king or the Ordainers had 
gained or lost, the great offices of state had changed 
hands, and there was all the grudging, all the personal 
animosities, which in later ages appear to be inseparable 
from government by party. 

The events which followed the peace with Scotland 
brought these influences more strongly into play. The 
shadows gathered rapidly round the miserable king 



A.D. 1324. Edward II. 271 

almost from that hour. The constitutional struggle had 
ceased. The death of the Earl of Lancaster had rid the 
Despensers of their most dangerous rival, the Avarice and 
revocation of the Ordinances had left the ^7?^^^'^^ 

01 the Des- 

government m their hands, and the death of pensers. 
the Earl of Pembroke in 1324 left them without competi- 
tors. The elder Hugh, now made Earl of Winchester, set 
no limit to his acquisitiveness ; he was an old man, and 
might have considered that it would be more conducive 
to his son's welfare to make friends than to multiply 
estates. The younger Hugh, himself a man of mature 
years, was made, by his violence and pride, even more 
conspicuous than his father. Henry of Lancaster, the 
brother and heir of Earl Thomas, was reduced to prac- 
tical insignificance by the detention of his brother's 
estates in the king's hands; and although the Despensers 
sought to purchase his services, and he had no personal 
dislike to the king, he could not be regarded as a safe 
and sound pillar of the falling state. The ministers 
Baldock and Stapleton were faithful men, but neither 
wise enough to counteract nor strong enough to guide 
the policy of the favourites. 

Philip V. died in January 1322, and the homage of 
Edward for the provinces of Ponthieu and Gascony was 
forthwith demanded for his successor, Charles Summons 
IV. A series of negotiations followed which ^° Edward 

° to do 

early in 1324 led to a peremptory summons homage to 
and a threat of forfeiture, no indistinct prelude FrendT 
to war. Edward might easily have crossed ^^"^s- 
over to his brother-in-law's court, as he had done more 
than once before, but the Despensers would not allow it. 
They dared not suffer him to escape from their direct con- 
trol, they dared not accompany him ; if he left them in 
England they knew their doom. The French court too 
was filled with their enemies ; Roger Mortimer, the lord 



2/2 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1325. 

of Wigmore, who had been taken prisoner in 1322, had 
escaped from the Tower and gone to France. Henry 
of Lancaster was waiting to supplant them at home. 
, War was the only alternative. Still negotiations pro- 
ceeded. First Pembroke was sent ; he died on the 
mission ; then Edmund of Kent, the king's half-brother ; 
he failed to obtain terms. The king's most trusted chap- 
lains were sent to the Pope ; but they spent their labour 
and treasure in securing their own promotion. At last 
Departure in 1 325 the quccn went over. She parted ap- 
of the queen parently on the best terms with both Edward 

tor i? ranee, c J 

followed by and the Despensers, and continued in friendly 
Prince correspondence until she had prevailed on 

Edward. |-jjg king to send over his eldest son. It was 

arranged that the provinces should be made over to him 
and that he should do the homage. This was done in 
September 1325, and almost immediately afterwards she 
threw off the mask. How long she had worn it we 
cannot tell. Possibly she left Edward in good faith and 
fell on her arrival in France into the hands of those who 
were embittered against him ; possibly she was a con- 
spirator long before. Anyhow the tie to the king, which 
could be so easily broken, could not, in the case of either 
mother or son, have been a strong one. As early as 
December the king was warned that Isabella and Edward 
would not return to him. 

Quickly she gathered round her all whom the king 
had cause to fear. Roger Mortimer, whether by reason of 
Intrit^uesof P^-Ssion or of policy, gained complete as- 
Isabeiia in ccndcncy ovcr her. The young Edward was 
instructed that it was his duty to deliver his 
father out of the hands of the Despensers or to deliver 
England out of the hand of Edward. Edmund of Kent, 
the king's brother, was persuaded to join, and the con- 
spirators, if not actually supported by promises from 



A.D. 1326. Edward II. 273 

England, were too willing to believe that to be victorious 
they had only to show themselves. As the French king 
was slow to commit himself, Isabella contracted an alli- 
ance with the Count of Hainault, and obtained money 
from the Italian bankers. They furnished supplies, the 
count furnished men and ships, 

Edward knew all this, but he knew not how to meet it. 
In vain he summoned parliaments that would do nothing 
when they met, and ordered muster^ that jj^j j^^^^ 
would not meet at all. He found that all ness of the 
whom he trusted deceived him ; that, except ^"^" 
the Despensers and the two detested ministers, none even 
pretended to support him ; and that he was obhged to 
depend on the very men who had the most to avenge. At 
last Isabella landed, on September 24, 1326, on the 
coast of Suffolk, proclaiming herself the Landing of 
avenger of the blood of Lancaster and the the^c^oatt°of 
sworn foe of the favourites. Edward, who Suffolk. 
was in London, tried to obtain help from the citizens, and 
prevailed on the bishops to excommunicate the invaders. 
But early in October he fled into the West, where he 
thought the Despensers were strong; on the 15th the 
Londoners rose and murdered the treasurer ; Archbishop 
Reynolds retired into Kent and began to make terms with 
the queen. 

She in the meantime moved on in triumph ; Henry 
of Lancaster, the king's brothers, the earls, save Arundel 
and Warenne, the bishops almost to a man, Trium hant 
joined her either in person or with effective march of 
help. Adam Orlton, the Bishop of Hereford, the West of 
who had been the confidential friend of Bo- England. 
hun, and Henry Burghersh, the Bishop of Lincoln, the 
nephew of Badlesmere, led the councils of aggression. 
They advanced by Oxford to attack Bristol, where they 
expected to find Edward and the Earl of Winchester. 

M. H. T 



2/4 T^^i^ Early Plantageiieis. a.d. 1326. 

On October 26 tlie queen reached Bristol, but her 
husband had gone into Wales and was attempting to 
Fall of escape to Ireland. The capture of Bristol, 

Bristol. however, was the closing event of his reign. 

The Earl of Winchester was hanged forthwith. The 
young Edward was declared by the lords on the spot 
guardian of the kingdom, and he summoned a parlia- 
ment to meet in his father's absence. The king, with 
Hugh le Despenser and Baldock, were taken on Novem- 
ber 16 ; on the 17th the Earl of Arundel was beheaded 
at Hereford ; on the 24th Hugh le Despenser was hanged, 
drawn, and quartered at the same place. The parliament 
was to settle the fate of the king, and the parliament 
Overthrow met at Westminster on January 7. There 
tiontTfthe' niatters were formally discussed, but the con- 
king, elusion was, as all the world knew, foregone. 
Even if any had thought that, now that the country was 
rid of the Despensers, the king might be allowed to 
reign on, the dread of the London mob and of the armed 
force which Mortimer brought up silenced them. The 
wretched archbishop declared that the voice of the people 
was the voice of God. Bishop Orlton, professing to 
believe that if the king were released the queen's life would 
not be safe, insisted that the parliament should choose 
between father and son. Bishop Stratford of Winchester, 
who led the Lancaster party and had no love for Mor- 
timer, drew the articles on which the sentence of renun- 
ciation was founded. The king, he said, was incompetent 
or too indolent to judge between right and wrong; he had 
obstinately refused the advice of the wise and listened to 
evil counsel ; he had lost Ireland, Scotland, and Gascony, 
he had injured the Church, oppressed the barons, he 
had broken his coronation oath, and he was ruining the 
land. After some debate the articles were placed before 
the unhappy king, who confessed that they were true and 



A.D. 1327. Edward II. 275 

that he was not worthy to reign. On January 20 he 
resigned the crown and the parHament renounced their 
allegiance and set his son in his place. For eight months 
longer he dragged on a miserable life, of which but little 
is known. Men told sad stories of suffering and insult 
which after his death provoked his kinsmen to avenge 
him, but none interfered to save him now. The reign of 
Mortimer and Isabella was a reign of terror ; and before 
the terror abated Edward was murdered. The ]\iurder of 
place of his death, the Castle of Berkeley, Edward il. 
and the date, September 21, are known. Henry of Lan- 
caster, who was at first appointed to guard him, had 
treated him too well. His new keepers, either prompted 
by the queen and Mortimer or anxious to win a reward, 
slew him in some secret way. And thus ended a reign 
full of tragedy, a life that may be pitied but affords no 
ground for sympathy. Strange infatuation, unbridled 
vindictiveness, recklessness beyond belief, the breach of 
all natural affection, of love, of honour, and loyalty, are 
here ; but there is none who stands forth as a hero. 
There are great sins and great falls and awful vengeances, 
but nothing to admire, none to be praised. 

So the son of the great king Edward perished ; 
and with a sad omen the first crowned head importance 
went down before the offended nation ; with a and signlfi- 

T ^ . T • T cance of the 

sad omen, for it was not done m calm or reign of 
righteous judgment. The unfaithful wife, the ^'^^^^'^ ^^• 
undutiful son, the vindictive prelate, the cowardly minister 
were unworthy instruments of a nation's justice. 

Such as it is, however, the reign of Edward II. is 
chiefly important as a period of transition. It winds up 
much that was left undone by his father ; it is the seed- 
time of the influences which ripened under his son. The 
constitutional acts of 1309, 1310 and 1311 are the supple- 
ment to those of 1297; the tragedy of Piers Gaveston and 



276 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1327. 

Earl Thomas is the primary cause of much of the per 
sonal history that follows. So, too, the reign closes the 
great interest of Scottish warfare, and contains the germ 
of the long struggle with France. But viewed by itself 
its tragic interest is the greatest ; and it is rich in moral 
and material lessons. It tells us that the greatest sin for 
which a king can be brought to account is not personal 
vice or active tyranny, but the dereliction of kingly 
duty ; the selfish policy which treats the nation as if it 
were made for him, not he for the nation. It is the 
greatest sin and the greatest folly, for it at once draws 
down the penalty and leaves the sinner incapable of 
avoiding it or resisting it ; it leaves the nation to be op- 
pressed by countless tyrants, and is by so much worse 
than the tyranny of one. It allows the corruption of 
justice at the fountain's head. 

So we close a long and varied epoch. The sum of 
its influences and results must be read in the history of 
Constitu- the following age, in which, in many important 
suks^'of the P'^ii'its, the reign of Richard II. repeats the 
epoch tragedy of Edward II. ; and the struggles of 

hisXwn-^' York and Lancaster consummate the series of 
fall. events which begin at Warwick and at Pomfret ; 

in which the constitution that we have seen organised 
and consolidated under Henry II. and Edward I. is tested 
to the utmost, strained and bent and warped, but still 
survives to remedy the tyranny of the Tudors and over- 
throw the factitious absolutism of the Stewarts. 



INDEX. 



ACC 

ACCURSI, Francesco, 211 
Acre, siege of, no ; the English 

at, 112 ; double siege at, 112 ; taken, 

114 
Adeliza, queen, 90 
Adrian IV., pope, 28,44 
Alexander III., pope, 3, 68, 87 
Alexander IV., pope, 177 
Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, 20 
Alfonso, King of Castille, 94 
Alfonso, the Wise, 21 
Alnwick, battle of, gi 
Anaalric, Count of Montfort, 185 
Amiens, council at, 192 
Amory, Roger d', 263 ; his death, 

268 
Anarchy in the reign of Stephen, 21 
Anglo-Saxon militia system, 83 
Anjou, house of, at Jerusalem, 99 ; 

loss of, 135 
Anselm, 60 

Aquitaine, feudal rights of, 48, 49 
Archbishops, disputed election of, at 

Canterbury, 137 
Arthur, grandson of Henry II., 118 ; 

his claims to the throne, 129 ; his 

claims in PVance, 133 ; murder of, 

135 
Arundel, earl of, 90 
Ascalon rebuilt, 115 
Audiey, Hugh of, 263 
Aumale, William of, 42 
Azai, conference at, 103 



BADLESMERE, Sir Bartholo- 
mew, 263 ; his death, 268 
Badlesmere, Lady, 266 
Baldock, chancellor, 270 



EEC 

Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
no 

Baldwin of Redvers, 17 

Baldwin the Leper, 99 

Balliol, John, made king of Scot- 
land, 231 ; summoned by Edward 
I., 245 ; at war with Edward I., 
246 ; surrender of, 246 

Bannockburn, battle of, 262 

Barbarossa, Frederick, 35 

Barons, disputes with, 143 ; refuse 
to serve under John, 145 ; their 
appeal to the laws of Henry I., 
146 ; their quarrels with John, 148 ; 
granting of the Magna Carta by 
John, 149 ; their long list of 
grievances, 187, 188 ; disunion 
among, 190 ; the differences with 
the king referred to arbitration, 
191 ; refuse to abide by the deci- 
sion, 192, 193 ; victory of, at the 
battle of Lewes, 195 ; defeated at 
Evesham, 199 ; their discontent 
under the growth of the royal 
power, 237 ; assembly of, at Salis- 
bury, 238; control of Edward II. 
by, 259 ; at war with Edward II., 
2.66 

Barons' War, the, 191 

Battles, Alnwick, 91 ; Bannockburn, 
262 ; Boroughbridge, 267; Bou- 
vines, 147 ; Consilt, 46 ; Dunbar, 
246 ; Evesham, 198 ; Lewes, 195 ; 
Lincoln, 22, 160 ; Standard, 18 

Bavaria, 8 

Beauchamp, Guy, Earl of Warwick, 
256 

Beaumont, Henry de, 259 

Becket, Thomas, 28 ; appointed han- 



2/8 



Index. 



BER 

cellor, 40 ; at the siege of Tou- 
louse, 50 ; his early life, 62 ; rises 
into note, 62 ; as chancellor, 63 ; 
becomes archbishop of Canterbury, 
64 ; Henry's confidence in him, 
64 ; resigns the chancery, 66 ; en- 
forces the feudal rights of his see, 
67 ; opposes the king on a finan- 
cial point, 68 ; his new enemies, 

70 ; quarrels with Henry II., 71 ; 
defends the clerical immunities, 

71 ; his conduct regarding the 
Constitutions of Clarendon, 73 ; is 
summoned to Northampton, 74 ; 
his trial, 74 ; his flight, 75 ; is 
exiled, 75 ; under the protection 
of Lewis VII., 75 ; his interviews 
with the king, 76 ; reconciliation 
with Henry II., 78; returns to 
England, 78 ; murder of, 78 ; the 
true glory of, 79 ; pilgrimage to 
his grave, 91 

Berengaria, Princess of Navarre, her 

marriage with Richard I., 114 
Berksted, Stephen, 196 
Berwick, sacked by Edward I., 246 ; 

capture of, by the Scotch, 263 
Bibars, Sultan, 205 
Bigod, Hugh, 12, 14, 17, 29, 44, 89, 

189 
Bigod, Roger, Earl of Norfolk, 237 
Bishops, indemnity for their losses 

caused by John, 146 
Bishops, Norman, 60 
Blanche of Castille, marries Lewis 

of France, 134 
Bohun, Humfrey, Earl of Hereford, 

237 
Boniface, Archbishop, 172, 176, 

189 
Boniface VIII., pope, 236, 247 
Boroughbridge, battle of, 267 
Bouvines, battle of, 147 
Brabangon mercenaries, 89 
Bracton, Henry, 211 
Breaute, Falkes de, 161, 163 
Bridgenorth, siege of, 43 
Bristol, fall of, 274 
Brito, Richard, 78 
Britton, judge, 211 
Bruce, Robert, Earl of Carrick, as 

regent, 247 
Bruce, RolDert, son of the Earl of 

Carrick, lays claim to the crown 

of Scotland, 229 ; his successes in 

Scotland, 261 



CLI 

Burgh, Hubert de, justiciar, i5i ; as 
regent, 162 ; work of, 164 ; fall of, 
169 ; reinstatement of, 171 

Burghersh, Henry, Bishop of Lin- 
coln, 273 

Burneil, Robert, 206, 211 



CADWALADER, 46 
Cambuskenneth, 246 
Campaign of 1301, 247 
Camvill, Gerard, warden of Lincoln 

castle, 119 
Camvill, Nicolaa de, 159 
Canterbur>% Archbishop of, his 

power, 57 ; disputed election of 

the Archbishop at, 137 
Castles, destruction of, by Henry II., 

Celestine III., pope, 120 

Chalus-Chabrol, castle of, 128 

Chancellor, his duties, 63 

Charles IV., King of France, 271 

Charters, confirmation of the, 239 ; 
reconfirmation of the, 241 

Christianity in England, 56 

Church, English, its history, 55 ; 
national unity first realised, 56 ; 
under the heptarchy, 56 ; great 
power of the clergy, 57 ; alliance 
with the State, 57 ; effect of the 
Conquest on, 58 ; policy of William 
I. regarding, 59 ; in Stephen's 
reign, 61 ; quarrel of John with, 
137 ; plunder of the clergy, 144 ; 
state of, in 1213, 143 

Clare, Richard de (Strongbow), his 
conquests of Ireland, 86 

Clare, Richard de. Earl of Gloucester, 
187, 189 ; his death, 191 

Clarendon, council at, 72 ; consti- 
tutions of, 72 ; council at, 77 ; 
assize of, passed, 77 ; constitutions 
of, renounced, 87 

Clement III., pope, 120 

Clement V., pope, 243 

Clergy, the, Stephen's breach with, 
19 ; great power of, 57 ; plunder of, 
144 ; representation of, under 
Edward I., 225 ; relations of 
Edward I. with, 234 ; taxation of, 
235 ; Edward I. quarrels with, 236 

Clericis Laicos, Bull, 236 

Clerkenwell, council of, 100 

Clifford, Roger, justiciar of Wales, 
209 



Index, 



279 



coi 

Coinage, debased by Stephen, 19 

Commons, House of, 224 

Comnenus, Isaac, King of Cyprus, 
114 

Comyn, John, Earl of Badenoch, 247, 
249 

Confirmatio cartarum, 82 

Conquest, the, effects of, on the 
Church, 58 

Conrad of Hohenstaufen, 27 

Conrad of Montferrat, 113 

Conradin, 5 

Consilt, battle of, 46 

Constance of Brittany, i2g 

Constantia of France married to 
Eustace, 29 

Constitutional crisis, 237, 238 

Constitutional grievances in 1245, 
172 

Constitutions of Clarendon, 72 ; re- 
nounced, 87 

Corbeuil, William of, Archbishop, 

Coronation, ceremony of, 45 
Court of Common Pleas, 214 
Court of Exchequer, 214 
Court of King's Bench, 214 
Court of Rome, character of, 86, 

87 
Coutances, Walter of, 120 
Cowton Moor, 18 

Crisis of 1258, 167 ; why it was de- 
layed, 180 
Crusade, second, 27 
Crusade, third, 100, no 
Crusade of Prince Edward, 205 
Customs, the revenue, 219 ; the new, 
243 



DANEGELD, abolition of, 16, 
53, 69 
David I., King of Scotland, first 

invasion by, 16 ; second invasion 

by, 18 
David, son of Llewelyn, Prince of 

Wales, rebels against Edward I., 

209 ; his death, 209 
De Religiosis statute, 213, 235 
Despenser, Hugh le, the baron's 

justiciar, 189 ; his death, 199 
Despenser, Hugh le, the favourite of 

Edward II., 263 ; sentence against, 
- 266 ; avarice and arrogance of, 271 
Despenser, Hugh le, Earl of Win- 
chester, hanged, 274 



EDW 

Dictum de Kenilworth, 199 
Dunbar, battle of, 246 
Durham, Bishop of, 108 

EARLS, appointment of, 19 ; 
Ecclesiastical school in the 
reign of Stephen, 61 

Ecclesiastical quarrels, 236 

Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, 170 ; driven into 
exile, 176 

Edmund of Cornwall, as regent, 227 

Edmund, Earl of Kent, 272 

Edward I., at the battle of Lewes, 
195 ; proclaimed king, 200 ; joins 
the crusade, 200 ; political educa- 
tion of, 202 ; motives determining 
his_ crusade, 203 ; his English 
policy, 203 ; his idea of kingship, 
204 ; crusade of 1270, 205 ; his ac- 
cession to the throne, 206 ; ad- 
ministration of the kingdom during 
his pilgrimage, 206 ; his corona- 
tion, 207 ^ rebellion of the prince 
of North Wales, 208; conquest of 
Wales, 2 09 ; as a lawgiver, 210 ; 
principles of his legislation,. 212 ; 
his legal reforms, 212 ; parlia- 
mentary settlement of revenue 
on, 220 ; his first parliament, 223 ; 
national policy of, 226; evil con- 
sequence caused by his absence, 
227 ; his claims upon Scotland, 
229 ; his relations with Philip IV., 
232 ; quarrel with Philip IV., 232 ; 
consequences thereof, 233 ; his rek- 
tions with the clergy, 234 ; quarrels 
with the clergy, 236 ; resistance of 
his subjects, 237, 238 ; dissatisfied 
with his subjects, 241 ; quarrels 
with Archbishop Winchelsey, 242 ; 
his relations with foreign merchants 
243 ; concludes peace with France, 
246 : marries Margaret, sister of 
Philip IV., 246 ; truce concluded 
with Scotland, 246 ; his new con- 
stitution for Scotland, 248 ; his 
death, 249 ; his character and 
motives, 250 

Edward II., reactionary policy of, 
251 ; personal tastes and favourites 
of, 252 ; his character, 252 ; peace 
with Scotland, 253 ; married to 
Isabella of France, 254 ; coronation 
of, 254 ; controlled by the barons, 



28o 



Index, 



EDW 

259 ; his struggles in favour of 
Gaveston, 259 ; changes in the 
administration, 260 ; new favour- 
ites of, 264 ; at war with the 
barons, 266 ; his campaign in the 
north, 269 ; truce concluded with 
Scotland, 269 ; summoned to do 
homage to Charles IV"., 271 ; in- 
trigues of the queen against, 272 ; 
helplessness of, 273 ; overthrow 
and deposition of, 274 ; murder 
of, 275 ; importance and signifi- 
cance of his reign, 275 ; consti- 
tutional results of the epoch closing 
with his downfall, 276 

Edward III., 272 ; appointed gover- 
nor of the kingdom, 274 

Eleanor, daughter of Henry II., 

94. 95 

Eleanor de Montfort, wife of Llewe- 
lyn, Prince of Wales, 209 

Eleanor of Aquitaine, 27 ; her mar- 
riage with Henry II., 30 ; regent 
on the death of her husband, 
106 ; her relations with John, 132 ; 
her death, 135 

Eleanor of Provence marries Henry 
III., 172 

Eleanor, widow of William Marshall, 
her second marriage with Simon 
de Montfort, 172 

Election at Canterbury, 137 

Evesham, battle of, 198 

Exchequer under Henry I., 216 

Empire, relations with the papacy, 3 

England, importance of its work 
during this epoch, 5 ; state of, 
during the absence of Henry II., 
52 ; under the heptarchy, 56 ; 
national unity first realised, 56 ; 
alliance with Germany, 76 ; during 
the crusade, 116 ; state of, on 
the death of Richard, 130; separa- 
tion from Normandy, 136 ; laid 
under interdict, 141 ; national in- 
activity of, 175 ; at war with 
Scotland, 245 ; truce concluded, 246 

Essex, Earl of, 251 

Eugenius III., 28 

Eustace, son of Stephen, 29 ; his 
marriage with Constantia of 
France, 29 ; his death, 31 



FERRERS, Earl of Derby, joins 
a league against Henry II., 89 



GIL 

Ferrers, William of, Earl of Derby, 

187 
Feudal law, 48 
Feudal lords, power of, 213 
Finance, system of, during the reign 

of Edward I., 215 
FitzOsbert, William, 126, 127 
FitzPeter, Geoffrey, justiciar, 127, 

145, 146 
FitzUrse, Reginald, 78 
Fitz Walter, Robert, 151, 160 
Flemings, invasion of Normandy by, 

89 
Foliot, Gilbert, 29 
Foreign affairs in 1258, 167 
France, alliance of, with Scotland, 

245 
Franconia, 6 
Frederick I., Emperor, 3, 35, 68, 76, 

III 
Frederick II., Emperor, 3, 210 ; 

marries Isabella, sister to Henry 

III., 172, 210 
Frederick of Swabia, in 
French history, character of the 

epoch of, 2 
Friscobaldi, the, 259 
Fulk the Good, Count of Anjou, 152 



GASCONS, the, rebellion of, 179 
Gaveston, Piers, favourite of 
Edward II., 252 ; his hatred of the 
earls, 256 ; banishment of, 256 ; 
recall of, 257 ; his death, 260 
Geddington, assembly at, 100 
Geoffrey of Anjou, 13, 15, 24, 27 
Geoffrey of Brittany, 98 ; his death, 

99 

Geoffrey of Nantes rebels against 
his brother Henry II., 50 

Geoffrey, son of Henry II., Arch- 
bishop of York. 120 

Geographical summary, 6 

German history, character of the 
epoch of, 3 

Germany, 3 ; condition of, under the 
early Plantagenets, 7 ; alliance 
with England, 76 

Giffard, Archbishop of York, ap- 
pointed regent, 206 

Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester, 194, 196, 
198, 199 ; swears fealty to Ed- 
ward I., 206 ; marries Johanna 
daughter of Edward I., 228 ; his 
death, 237 



Index, 



281 



GIL 

Gilbert of Vacoeuil, 52 

Gilbert, son of the Earl of Glouces- 
ter, regent, 258 

Glanvill, Ranulf, the justiciar, go, 97 
106, no ; his death, 112 ' 

Gray, John de, Bishop of Norwich, 
elected Archbishop of Canterbury 
139 

Gregory IX., pope, 176 

Grosseteste, Robert, Bishop of Lin- 
coln, 173, 176 

Gualo, 152, 157, 162 

Gwynneth, Owen, 46 



HARCLAY, Sir Andrew, go- 
vernor of Carlisle, 267 ; exe- 
cution of, 269 
Hawisia, daughter of William, Earl 
of Gloucester, 94 ; wife of John 
134 ' 

Henry I., question of succession at 
his death, 11 ; precautions taken 
by, 12 ; competitors for the suc- 
cession, 13 ; his funeral, 15 
Henry II., knighted at Carlisle, 29 ; 
mames Eleanor of Aquitaine, 30 ; 
his arrival in England, 30 ; leaves 
England, 31 ; importance attached 
to his succession, 32 ; his youth 
and education, 33; his character, 
34 ;.his family policy, 34 ; his great 
position in Christendom, 35 ; mis- 
management of his children, 36 ; 
his personal appearance, 36 ; early 
reforms of, 37 ; his advisers, 39 ; 
coronation of, 40; disputes re- 
garding the resumption of lands 

42 ; surrender of the malcontents,' 

43 ; frequent councils, 43 ; second 
coronation of, 45 ; first war against 
Wales, 46 ; visits France, 47 ; his 
foreign possessions, 47 ; his rela- 
tions with his vassals, 47 ; his rela- 
tion to the King of France, 48 • 
questions of boundary, 49 ; per- 
sonal questions, 49; his true po- 
jicy, 49 ; crushes his brother Geof- 
frey's rebellion, 50; desists from 
attacking Toulouse, 50 ; his chil- 
dren, 51 ; conclusion of peace with 
Lewis VII., 52 ; his legal reforms, 
52, S3 ; increase of national unity, 
55 : his confidence in Thomas 
Becket, 64 ; returns from France 



HEN 

te ; second war with Wales 67 • 
his disputes with Becket, 68-71 • 
appeal to the ancient customs,' 
71 ; his motives, 72; exaspe- 
rated at Becket, 73 ; his cruel 
measures towards Becket 76 • 
third war with Wales, 76'; pro- 
ceedings during the quarrel 76 • 
reconciliation with Becket ' 78 • 
perseverance in reform, 80; training 
of the people in self-government, 
82 ; his political object in crown- 
ing his son, 85; applies to the 
pope on Becket's death, 86 ; his 
penitence and absolution, 87 • quar- 
rels with his son Henry, 88 ; his 
success against Lewis VII., 90 ; in 
France, 90 ; his arrival in England, 
91.; his policy, 92 ; importance of 
this struggle, 93 ; resumes his 
schemes, 94 ; his visit to England, 
95 ; his last quarrel, 100 ; at war 
with Philip II., loi ; his flight to 
JNormandy, 102 ; his last days 
102 ; his death, 103 ' 

Henry III., 4 ; character of the 
reign of, 153 ; his character, 154 • 
division of his reign, 155 ; his 
party, 157 ; coronation of, '158 ; 
second coronation of, 162 ; his 
foreign policy, 165 ; his personal 
administration, 165 ; internal mis- 
government, 166 ; his first act 
I 167 ; his ingratitude, 169 ; his plan 
of governing, 171 ; marries Eleanor 
of Provence, 172 ; his unconstitu- 
tional means for raising money 
174 ; his impolicy, 174 ; his rela- 
tions with the popes, 175 ; accepts 
the kingdom of Sicily, 177; his 
French transactions, 178 ; visits 
France, 179 ; his dynastic policy 
181 ; political troubles of, 190 ■ 
the award of Lewis IX., 191 ; its' 
effects, 193 ; military successes of, 
194 ; defeated at the battle of 
Lewes, 195 ; conduct of the new 
government, 197 ; defeats the 
barons at Evesham, 199 ; his death 
200 ' ' 

Henry VI., Emperor of Germany 

116-122 
Henry, Bishop of Winchester, 20^ 22 ; 

retires from court, 23 
Henry, Earl of Lancaster, 271 273 
Henry of Essex, constable, 46, 67 



282 



hidex. 



HEN 

Henry, son of Henry II., his mar- 
riage, 51 ; coronation of, without 
his queen, 77 ; second coronation 
of, with his queen, 88;. quarrels 
with his father, 88 ; intrigues of, 
95 ; second revolt against his fa- 
ther, 97 ; his death, 98 

Henry, son of the King of the Ro- 
mans, his death, 200 

Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony 
and Bavaria, his marriage, 76 

HeracHus, patriarch, mission of, 99 

Herbert, Bishop of SaHsbury, 126 

Hildebrandine revival, 59 

History, human, various areas and 
stages of, I ; under the early Plan- 
tagenets, 5 

Hohenstaufen, drama of, 3 ; empire 
of, 8_ 

Honorius III., pope, 157 

House of Commons, 224 

House of Lords, 224 

Hoveden, Roger, 33 

Hugh de Gournay, 135 

Hugh of Beauchamp, 99 

Hugh of la Marche, 134 

Hugh of Lincoln, 126 

Hugh of Nunant, Bishop of Coven- 
try, 124 



IMPORTED merchandise, taxes 
on, 219 

Income Tax, 53 

Ingeburga of Denmark, 134 

Innocent III., pope, 4, 127, 139, 142 

Innocent IV., pope, 176 

Interdict, England laid under, 141 

Ireland, proposal to conquer, 43 ; 
expedition of Henry II. to, 86 

Isabella, betrothed wife of Hugh of 
la Marche, 134 

Isabella of France, wife of Edward 
II., 254 ; position and policy of, 
270 ; her intrigues in France, 272 ; 
her triumphant march to the West 
of England, 273 ; rule under, 275 

Isabella, sister to Henry III., mar- 
ried to Emperor Frederick iL, 172 

Italy, condition of, 6 

Itinerant judges first go their cir- 
cuits, 82 



JERUSALEM, captured by Sala- 
din, 100; Richard's march on, 115 



LAU 

Jews, persecution of, 106 ; banished 

from England, 228 
Jocelin de Bailleul, 72 
Johanna, daughter of Edward L, 

marries Gilbert of Gloucester, 

228 
Johanna, daughter of Henry II. , 

94 ; wife of William the Good, 

113 

John, son of Henry II. , his marriage, 
94 ; cursed by his dying father, 
103 ; provision made for, by his 
brother Richard, 109 ; position of, 
118 ; intrigues with Philip II. , 
121 ; rebellion of, 123 ; secures 
Normandy, 130 ; his coronation, 
131 ; division of the history of his 
reign, 132 ; at peace with Philip 
II. , 134 ; his second marriage, 134 ; 
loses Normandy and Anjou, 135 ; 
his ecclesiastical troubles, 137 ; ex- 
communication of, 141 ; his obdu- 
racy, 141 ; swears fealty to the 
pope, 142 ; quarrels with the 
barons, 143 ; his journey to the 
North, 146 ; goes to France, 147 ; 
the crown offered to Lewis, 151 ; 
his successes against the barons, 
151 ; his death, 152 

John of Salisbury, 28 

John of Brienne, 4 

John the Marshall, 70, 74 

John XXII., 3 

Judges, punishment of, 228 ; itine- 
rant, 81 ; fiscal work of, 81 ; first 
go their circuits, 82 

Judicature, restoration of, 43 ; cen- 
tral, 83 

Jurisdiction, provincial reform of, 
81, 82 

Justice, administration of, 53 



KENILWORTH, dictum de, 
lOQ 



LACY, Henry de. Earl of Lin- 
coln, 255 ; his death, 258 
Lands, resumption of, 42 
Langton, Stephen, elected Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, 140 ; ab- 
solves the king, 145 ; crowns 
Henry III., 162 ; his death, 168 
Langton, Walter, 238, 243, 253, 260 
Laudabiliter Bull, 44 



Index, 



283 



LAW 

Laws, appeal to the, of Henry I., 
146 ; probable plan for the codifica- 
tion of, 211 ; Edward's principles 
of legislation, 212 

League against Henry II., 89 

Leicester, Earl of, joins a league 
against Henry II., 89 

Leopold, Duke of Austria, 116 

Lewes, battle of, 195 

Lewes, Mise of, 196 

Lewis VI., King of France, 8 

Lewis VII., King of France, 4 ; 
joins the second crusade, 27 ; his 
character, 35 ; his relation to Henry 
II., 48 ; takes up the cause of 
Becket, 75 ; joins a league against 
Henry II., 8g ; utterly routed by 
Henry II., 90 : his death, 96 

Lewis IX., King of France, 4 ; arbi- 
trates between Henry III. and 
his barons, 191 ; award of, 191 ; 
effects of the award, 193 ; motives 
for his decision, 193 ; his death, 
205 

Lewis of Bavaria, 3 

Lewis son of Philip of France, his 
marriage, 134 ; the crown of Eng- 
land offered to him, 151 : his 
successes against John, 151 ; lands 
in England, 151 ; treaty concluded 
with Henry III., 159; defeated 
at Lincoln and departure from 
England, 160 

Liege, Bishop of, 123 

Lincoln, battle of, 22, 160 

Lincoln, parliament at, 242 

Linlithgow castle, 247 

Lisbon, 10 

Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales, 
194 ; rebellion of, against Edward 
I., 208 ; married to Eleanor de 
Montfort, 209 : his death, 209 

Longchamp, William, bishop of Ely, 
109 ; chancellor, 116, 117 ; as su- 
preme justiciar, 118 ; demands the 
royal castles, 1 19 ; removed from 
the justiciarship, 121 

Lords, House of, 224 

Lorraine, Lower, 9 

Lothar II., 6 . 

Lucy, Richard de, 29, 40, 72, 89, 90; 
appointed regent during the king's 
absence, 52 

Lusignan, Ethelmer, Bishop of Win- 
chester, 181 

Lusignan, Guy of, 99 



MON 
1\ /TABILIA, Countess of Glouces- 

Madoc, rebellion of, 244 

Magna Carta, granted at Runny- 

mede, 149 ; attempts to annul it, 

150 ; re-issued, 158 ; third issue of, 

160 ; confirmed, 227 
Malcolm IV., King of Scotland, 

42 
Mandeville, Geoffrey, Earl of Essex, 

25, 134, 159 
Mandeville, William, 109 
Manners during this epoch, 4 
Mans, le, capture of, by Philip II., 

lOI 

Margaret of France, daughter of 
Lewis VII., 51 ; wife of Henry, 
son of Henry II., 98 

Margaret, sister of Philip IV., mar- 
ries Edward I., 246 

Marlborough, parliament of, 199 

Marshall, Richard, 170 

Marshall, William, Earl of Pembroke, 
157 ; his death, 160 ; work of, 162 

Martell, William, 29 

Martin, master, 176 

Matilda, daughter of Henry I., 
fealty sworn to, 14, 16 ; her arrival 
m England, 21 ; elected Lady of 
England, 22 ; her imprudent rule, 

23 ; her struggles against Stephen, 

24 ; flies to Oxford, 24 ; the king- 
dom divided, 25 ; her government 
in Normandy, 40 

Matilda, daughter of Henry II., her 
marriage, 76 

Maurienne, Count of, 88 

Mercenaries, importation of, 19 ; 
expulsion of, 40 

Merchandise, taxation on importa- 
tion of, 219 

Merchants, foreign, relations of Ed- 
ward I. with, 243 

Merlin, prophesies of, 37 

Miles of Hereford, 27 

Military system in Henry II. 's time, 

83 

Mise of Lewes, 196 

Monasteries, 60 

Monks of Canterbury, their quarrels 
regarding the election of arch- 
bishop, 138 

Montfort, Simon de. Earl of Leices- 
ter, marries Eleanor, daughter of 
John, 172 ; his character, 184, 
military successes of, 194 ; parlia- 



284 



Index, 



MOR 

ment of, 197 ; impolicy of his sons, 
198 ; killed in the battle of Eves- 
ham, 199 ; his character, as a 
great and good man, 200, 201 

Moral lessons, 4 

Mortimer, Hugh, 42 

Mortimer, Roger, 189; appointed 
regent, 206 

Mortimer, Roger, Lord of Wigmore, 
265, 271, 272, 27s 

Morville, Hugh de, 78 

Mowbray, Roger, 100 

NEVILLE, Ralph, Bishop of 
Chichester, 171 

New Custom, the, 243 

Nicolas IV., pope, 235 

Nicolas, Bishop of Tusculum, 146 

Nigel, Bishop of Ely, 40 

Norman bishops, 60 

Normandy, invasion of, 8g ; for- 
feiture of, 135 ; separation from 
England, 136 

Normans, results of rule under, 10 

Northampton, council at, 73 ; par- 
liament at, 254 

Nottingham, castle of, 119 

ORDAINERS, the, 258 
Ordinances of 1311, the, 258 ; 
revocation of, 268 
Orlton, Adam, Bishop of Hereford, 

273, 274 
Otho, Cardinal, 176 
Otho, of Saxony, Emperor, 128 
Oxford, siege of, 25 ; parliament of, 
188 ; provisions of, 189 

PACIFICATION, terms of, in 
ii53> 37 

Palestine, condition of, 99 

Pandulf, 142 ; as legate, 162 ; resigns, 
164 

Papacy, relations with the empire, 
3 ; demands in Henry III.'s time, 
166; taxation, 168; Henry III.'s 
relations with the popes, 175 ; list 
of papal assumptions, 176 ; papal 
claims over Scotland, 242 

Paris, Matthew, 131, 174, 185 

Parliament, 172 ; discussions in, 173; 
of 1258, 187 ; origin of our mo- 
dern, 197 ; under Edward I., 223 ; 
growth of, 223 ; Lincoln, 242 

Peckham, Archbishop, 235 



REY 

Pembroke, Earl of, 256 

Perche, Count of, 160 

Peter de Vineis, 210 

Peter of Wakefield, 142 

Petronilla, Lady, 91 

Peverell, William, 43 

Philip II., King of France, his 
hatred of Henry II., 96 ; at war 
with Henry II., 100; joins the 
third crusade, no ; at Messina, 
113 ; intrigues of, against Richard, 
121 ; concludes a two months' 
peace with John, 133 ; at peace 
with John, 134 ; takes Normandy 
and Anjou, 135 

Philip III., King of France, 206 ; his 
death, 232 

Philip IV., the Fair, King of France 
his relations with Edward I , 232 ; 
quarrels with Edward I., 233 

Philip v., King of France, 271 

Philip of Flanders joins a league 
against Henry II., 89 

Pipewell, council of, 108 

Political history during this epoch, 2 

Politicians, ecclesiastical, 61 

Portugal during the age of the 
early Plantagenets, 9 

Provisions of Oxford, 189 

Provisions of Westminster, 190 

Puiset, Hugh de, Bishop of Durham, 
89 : justiciar, 116, 117 ; expelled. 



118 



O 



UIA Emptores statute, 213, 224 



"n ANULF, Earl of Chester, 21 

Ranulf, Earl of Chester, 129, 157, 169 

Raymond of Toulouse, 184 

Rebellion of 1T36, 17 

Reform, Henry II. 's plans of, 37 ; 
progress of, 52 ; Henry's perseve- 
rance in, 80 ; political object of it, 
81 ; new schemes of, 257 

Reginald, Earl of Cornwall, 90 

Reginald, subprior, elected Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, 139 

Religion during this epoch, 4 

Revenue, nature of, in the time of 
Henry II., 52 ; under Henry III. 
218 ; sources of, during Edward I.'s 
reign, 215; customs, 219; parliamen- 
tary settlement on Edward I., 220 

Reynolds, Walter, 261 



Inde^. 



285 



RIC 

Richard I., Coeur de Lion, son of 
Henry II., 51 ; quarrels with his 
brother Henry, 98 ; his father's 
distrust of, 98 ; joins the third 
crusade, 100 ; does homage to 
Philip II., loi ; joins in a con- 
spiracy against his father, loi ; 
character of his reign, 104 ; his 
accession to the throne, 105 ; his 
coronation, 106 ; his personal ap- 
pearance and character, 106, 107 ; 
his mode of procuring means for 
the third crusade, 108 ; starts on 
the crusade, 109 ; his journey 
along the Italian shore, 112 ; at 
Messina, 113 ; his campaigns in 
Palestine, 114 ; exploits of, 115 ; 
his retreat and truce, 116 ; cap- 
tivity of, 116 ; negotiations for his 
release, 122 ; ransom raised for his 
release, 122 ; his release, 123 ; his 
second visit to England, 124 ; 
money refused him by the great 
council, 126 ; his last years, 127 ; 
events of the war with Philip II., 
127 ; his death, 128 

Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
168 

Richard, Earl of Cornwall, King 
of the Romans, brother to 
Henry III., 165, 169 ; his mar- 
riage, 172 ; his character, 182 ; at 
the battle of Lewes, 195 ; his 
death, 200 

Robert, Earl of Gloucester, 15 ; 
swears fealty to Stephen, 16 ; his 
power 18 ; taken prisoner, 24 ; his 
death, 27 

Robert, Earl of Leicester, regent 
during the king's absence, 52 

Roches, Peter des. Bishop of Win- 
chester, regent, 157, 161 ; the king's 
adviser, 169 ; fall of, 170 

Rochester castle besieged, 151 

Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, 14 ; jus- 
ticiar of Henry I., 20 ; arrested, 
20 

Roger, Earl of Leicester, 26 

Roger of Hereford, 42 

Roger of Pont I'Eveque, Archbishop 
of York, 77 

Rome, proceedings at, 28 ; character 
of the court of, 86, 87 

Rudolf of Hapsburg, 3 

Runnymede, granting of the Magna 
Carta at, 149 



STE 

SAER DE QUINCY, 160 
St. Albans, assembly at, 146 

St. Andrew's, Bishop of, 247 

St. Bernard, 4, 28 

St. Edmund, 80 

St. Edmund's, coronation at, 45, 46 

St. Gregory, 56 

St. Hugh, 126 

St. Paul's, council at, 146 

St. William, 28 

Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, 99 

Salisbury, Earl of, 151 

Salisbury, meeting of barons at, 238 

Saragossa, 10 

Saxony, 8 

Scotland, invasion of England by, 
16, 18 ; submission of, to Henry 
II., 92 ; claims of Edward I. 
upon, 22^ ; the kingdom of, 230 ; 
papal claims over, 242 ; alliance 
of, with France, 245 ; troubles in, 
245 ; war against England, 246 ; 
truce with England, 246 ; affairs 
in, after the fall of Balliol, 247 ; 
Edward's new constitution for, 
248 ; truce concluded with Edward 
II., 269 

Scottish independence, war of, 246 

Scutage, institution of, 54 

Segrave, Sir John, 247 

Segrave, Stephen, justiciar, 169 

Shrewsbury, assembly at, 223 

Sibylla, queen of Jerusalem, sister ot 
Baldwin the Leper, 99, 113 

Simon de Montfort, see Montfort, 
Simon de 

Spain, state of, 9 

Standard, battle of the, 18 

Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, 270 

Statute De Religiosis, 235 

Statute of Wales, 210 

Statute of Westminster, the first, 223 

Statute of Winchester, 214 

Stephen of Blois, his claim to the 
throne, 13 ; his reception in 
England, 14 ; his election and 
coronation, 14 ; his first charter, 
15 ; his second charter, 16 ; in- 
vaded by the Scots, 16, 18 ; rebel- 
lion of 1 1 36, 17 ; beginning of 
troubles, 17 ; his imprudent policy, 

18 ; debases coinage, 19 ; his new 
earls, 19 ; imports mercenaries, 

19 ; his breach with the clergy, 
19 ; arrests the bishops, 20 ; be- 
ginning of anarchy, 21 ; taken 



286 



Index. 



^^ 



f1 



STI 

prisoner, 21 ; is released, 24 ; his 
success in 1142, 25 ; division of the 
kingdom, 25 ; period of anarchy, 
26 ; proceedings at Rome, 28 ; 
quarrels with the archbishop, 28 ; 
question of succession, 29 ; nego- 
tiates for peace, 30 ; his death, 31 ; 
estimate of his character, 31 

Stigand, Archbishop, 58 

Stirling, English defeated near, 247 

Stratford, John, Bishop of Win- 
chester, 274 

Swabia, 6 



TANCRED, King of Sicily, 11 3 
Taxation, variety of, in Henry 
Il.'sreign, 83 ; papal, 168; changes 
in the mode of, 217 ; summoning of 
representative assemblies for the 
purposes of, 221 ; of the clergy, 
235 ; confirmation of the charter 
establishing the right of the people 
to determine, 329 

Templars, the, 50, 51 

Theobald, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 20 ; quarrels with Stephen, 
28 ; negotiates the succession of 
Henry II., 39 ; adviser to Henry 
II., 40 ; his death, 52 

Theobald, Count, 13, 15 

Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, 255 ; 
despotism of, 262, 263 ; execution 
of, 267 ; ulterior consequences of 
his execution, 267 

Thurstan, Archbishop, 18 

Tickhill, castle of, 119 

Toledo, 10 

Toulouse, war of, 50 

Tracy, William de, 78 



VALENCE, Aymer de, Earl of 
Pembroke, 249, 260, 262; made 
governor of Scotland, 253 ; his 
death, 272 
Vescy, Lady de, 259 ; Eustace de, 
151, 159 



W 



76; 
207 
210 



YPR 

ALERAN of Meulan, 26 . 
Wales, at war with Henry 
II., 46 ; second war with Henry 
II., 67 ; third war with Henry II., 
turbulence of the princes, 
conquest of, 209 ; statute of, 
; rebellion in, under Madoc, 

Wallace, Sir William, 246, 248 
Wallingford, peace negotiations at, 

3° 
Walter, Hubert, Bishop of Salisbury, 
109, no, 113, 123 ; made Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, 123 ; govern- 
ment of, 125 ; resignation of, 127 ; 
transfers his devotion to John on 
the death of Richard, 130 ; his 
death, 137 

Walter of Cantilupe, Bishop of Wor- 
cester, 187, 189 
Wareham, 25 
Warenne, Earl, 246 
Warenne, William of, surrender of 
his estates in Norfolk, 44 ; knight- 
hood conferred on, 47 
Westminster, treaty at, 30 ; council 
at, 70 ; provisions of, 190 ; courts 
at, 214 ; statute of, the first, 223 

William I., King of Scotland, joins a 
league against Henry II., 89 ; 
taken prisoner, 91 

William, Earl of Salisbury, 156 

William of Aumale, 163 

William of Eynesford, 70 

William of Ferrers, 187 

William, son of Henry I., 12 

William the Good, of Sicily, his mar- 
riage, 94 

Winchelsey, Robert, 235, 238 ; quar- 
rels with the king, 242, 254 

Winchester, Bishop of, brother of 
Stephen, 39 

Winchester, Bishop of, 108 

Winchester, statute of, 214 

Woodstock, council at, 67, 68 

Worms, diet of, 122 

•WPRES, William of, 42 



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